Easy
Normal
Hard
Insane
Expert
Refer to this thread for alternative difficulty naming methods.
- Advanced: A difficulty combining elements found in both Normal and Hard difficulties. It is often used to fill the gap between lower-level normals and higher-level hards.
- Extra/Extreme/Ultra: Names used to replace Expert and to indicate increasing difficulty among multiple Expert difficulties.
- Jump: Hit objects spaced further apart from each other in comparison to the average spacing for such patterns. Usually snapped to 1/2 beats.
- Stream: Consecutive circles grouped together. Usually snapped to 1/4 beats.
- Stack: Two or more hit objects placed in the same spot on the grid.
- Stack Leniency: A setting used to determine if hit objects stack or directly overlap each other. Increasing its value will cause hit objects to stack at longer time intervals.
- Overlap: Hit objects touching each other where they do not stack.
- Snapping: Timeline tick where an object is placed.
- Slider head/tail: The start/end positions of a slider.
- Slider border: Visible outline of a slider's path. When this is distorted through overlaps, sliders can become harder to read.
- Slider anchors: Tools used to shape the body of a slider. Gray anchors shape a single curve, while red anchors end the current curve. Also referred to as "nodes".
- Slider Velocity: A slider's speed defines how much space it travels within a given beat. Base slider velocity can be controlled in the timing panel and additional changes can be made through inherited (green) timing points.
- Buzz slider: A slider snapped to 1/8 or denser with more than three reverses, causing a "buzz" rather than individual hit sounds.
- Short Reversing Slider: A short slider (usually 1/4 or 1/8 snapping) with 1 or more reverses. This allows a player to keep their cursor in one place while the slider reverses.
- Hold Slider: A slider requiring the player to keep their cursor in one place rather than follow the sliderball.
- Burai Slider: A slider directly overlapping its own body, resulting in an unclear slider path.
- Extended slider: A slider whose tail is not snapped to a specific beat in the music, but is instead expressing a prolonged sound. The most common extended slider is 3/4 of a beat.
- Slider Tick Rate: The amount of slider ticks that appear per beat of music.
- Spinner Recovery Time: The time between the end of a spinner and the following hit object.
- Time-distance equality: Spacing between hit objects is proportional to the duration of time between them. Also known as using a constant distance spacing.
- Hit object/Note density: The average timeline gaps between hit objects expressed in fractions of a beat (such as 1/1 for one beat, 1/2 for half a beat).
- Keysounding: hit sounding using samples extremely similar or directly from the song in their respective places. This method of hit sounding usually provides low feedback to the player.
Overall rules and guidelines apply to every kind of osu! difficulty. Rhythm related guidelines apply to approximately 180 BPM maps with 4/4 time signatures. If your song is drastically faster or slower, some variables might be different, as detailed in this article.
- Hit objects must never be off-screen in 4:3 aspect ratios. Hit objects that are even partially off-screen can create reading difficulties. Test play your map to confirm this.
- Spinners must be long enough for Auto to achieve 1000 bonus score. Short spinners are unreasonably difficult to complete.
- Each map must use at least two different custom combo colours unless the default skin is forced. The combo colours must not blend with the map's background/storyboard/video in any case. This is so hit objects are always visible to the player and custom skin's combo colours do not blend with the background accidentally.
- You must not use sound samples for sliderslide, sliderwhistle, and spinnerspin which do not naturally loop. These hit sounds are continuous, meaning that their files play from start to end and loop as one continuous sound for the length of the object.
- Every slider must have a clear and visible path to follow from start to end. Sliders which overlap themselves in a way that makes any or their individual sections unreadable or ambiguous cannot be used, such as burai sliders and hold sliders without straightforward slider borders.
- Do not use keysounds without hitnormal support. If sounds blend perfectly with the song, feedback for hitting notes is minimal.
- You should not silence both slider ticks and slider slides together. Silencing both can be fitting when ticks cover no sounds, but doing so otherwise is not acceptable.
- Avoid visually obstructing reverse arrows on sliders with other hit objects in the default or beatmap-specific skin. Covering up reverse arrows on sliders can result in sliders being ambiguous to read.
- Sliderends of extended sliders should be snapped according to the song's beat structure. If the song is using a straight beat, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 should be used. If the song is using a swing beat, 1/6 or 1/12 should be used. If the song has a beat in a different position from what was recommended, snapping to an actual beat always takes priority.
- Avoid perfectly overlapping slider bodies in a way that causes reading issues. Doing so can cause sliders to be misread as a circle due to obscuring the slider body.
- All circles and slider heads should be snapped to distinct sounds in the music. Adding hit objects where there is no musical cue to justify them can result in unfitting rhythms.
- Slider tick rate should be set according to the song. For example if your song contains a section that uses 1/3 snapping only, using tick rate 2 would not be fitting for the entire map. In such cases, tick rate 1 should be used.
- Avoid using combo colours, slider borders or hitcircleoverlays with ~50 luminosity or lower. Dark colours like these impact readability of approach circles with low background dim and the other elements partially give up their functions as borders.
- Avoid using combo colours with ~220 luminosity or higher during kiai times. They create bright pulses which can be unpleasant to the eyes.
- Avoid overlapping hit objects with other elements of the default and beatmap-specific skins. This refers to all elements that are part of the interface and can be skinned.
- Ensure that your combos are not unreasonably short or long. Combos should reflect patterns expressed in the song, such as bars of music or vocal/instrumental phrases.
- Buzz sliders should have appropriate delay before the next note. 1/8 and 1/16 sliders should be followed by a 1/4 gap, whereas 1/12 sliders should be followed by a 1/6 gap. This ensures that the hit-window between hit objects is playable.
- Spinners should be used when they fit the music. This is to ensure score differences among perfect plays on the leaderboard. They usually fit during held notes, changes in intensity, or transitions between sections.
- Avoid using similar combo colours in successive combos. Players should be able to differentiate between different combos in a map.
- Spinners and sliderends should have hit sound feedback. If either are used to represent a held sound and do not end on a distinct sound, having no feedback is acceptable.
- Spinner circles and their centers must be clearly visible and exactly centered. This is to ensure that players have a visible aid to help them spin consistently, as well as a visual reference point to spin around.
- Hit100 and hit300 must be different from corresponding geki and katu skin elements. Hit300g, hit300k, and hit100k indicate if players perfectly hit all 300 in a combo.
- A custom slider border colour must be selected when a beatmap contains skin elements from the hit circle or slider sets. This is to avoid the default slider border or a player's custom skin's slider border from conflicting with the map's specific colour scheme. This is done by adding
SliderBorder: <RGB Value>under[Colours]in a.osufile. - Slider body colour cannot be too similar to slider border colour. If both of these settings are too similar to each other, then the slider border element loses its point as a visual border for the slider. Slider body colour can be selected by adding
SliderTrackOverride: <RGB Value>under[Colours]in a.osufile. - Slider body colour and slider border colour together must not blend in with a beatmap's background or video. At that point, they make slider paths unclear or ambiguous to read. Having one blend in while the other does not may be acceptable.
- Usage of the old style spinners is not recommended. It can be only used with Preferred Skin set to Default. Skins using SpinnerBackground will change the colour of spinner-background.png and that could negatively change spinner's appearance. This setting does not work via editing the
[Colours]column in the.osufile of map.