osu! game modes Available on DanceGAI
What is osu! mania?
osu! mania is the vertical-scrolling mode of osu!, the free rhythm game: notes fall down a set of columns, and you press the key for each column as a note reaches the judgement line. If you've played DDR, Guitar Hero, Beatmania or O2Jam, it will feel familiar — but on your keyboard.
How osu! mania is played
Each column has its own key. A map is played with a fixed number of columns — its key mode. 4K and 7K are the most popular, but osu! mania maps exist for many more.
- Notes — tap the key as the note crosses the judgement line.
- Long notes (hold notes) — press at the head, hold through the body, release at the tail.
- Judgement — every hit is graded by how close it was to the beat (from MAX and 300 down to a miss); your accuracy and combo come from those grades.
- Scroll speed — chosen by the player, not the map: faster speed spreads notes out, slower packs them together. It changes how a map reads, not its timing.
What's in an osu! mania beatmap
A beatmap is one chart for one song — a mapset is the song with several difficulties. Each difficulty is a plain-text .osu file containing:
- Hit objects — every note and long note: its column and its time in milliseconds (plus the end time for a long note).
- The key count — in osu! mania the "circle size" setting is the number of columns.
- Timing points — red (uninherited) lines set the BPM and offset, so every object sits on the beat; green (inherited) lines change scroll speed or hitsound volume for a section.
- Difficulty settings — HP drain, overall difficulty (how strict the timing judgement is) and the mode's own settings.
- Metadata — title, artist, the mapper's name, the difficulty name and tags.
- The .osz file — a mapset is shared as one .osz: a zip archive with every difficulty's .osu file, the song and the background image. Opening it (or dragging it onto the game window) imports the whole set.
Difficulty and star rating
osu! calculates a star rating (★) for every difficulty from its note patterns: how dense they are, and how hard the combinations are for your hands. A mapset usually climbs from an easy chart to a hard one so players at every level can play the song.
osu! mania on DanceGAI
osu! mania is the mode DanceGAI supports today. ManiaGAI, DanceGAI's osu! mania model, turns any song into a playable mapset: 4K to 9K, the difficulties you choose from ★1 to ★10, timing detected automatically, as a ready .osz.
The maps are AI-generated and unranked — made for playing songs nobody has mapped yet, and for practice. You can open them in the osu! editor and change anything.
Open the AI osu! mania beatmap generator
Which key mode should I start with?
4K is the usual starting point: four columns, two fingers per hand. 7K is the other big community. DanceGAI creates maps from 4K to 9K.
Can osu! mania play standard maps?
Yes — osu! can convert osu! standard maps to osu! mania automatically. Converts are generated by a fixed algorithm; maps made for osu! mania are designed around the columns.
Never played osu!? Install the game and play your first map →
The four osu! modes
- osu! mania Available on DanceGAI
- What is osu! standard? Beta on DanceGAI
- What is osu! taiko? Coming soon on DanceGAI
- What is osu! catch? Coming soon on DanceGAI