What is osu! standard?

How osu! standard is played

You aim with the cursor and hit with a click or one of two keys. Every object is timed to the music and placed somewhere on the playfield — so reading where the next object is matters as much as rhythm.

• Hit circles — an approach circle shrinks onto the circle; hit it as the two meet.
• Sliders — hit the start, then hold and follow the ball along the path, sometimes back and forth.
• Spinners — spin the cursor around the centre until the spinner fills.
• Combos — objects are grouped into numbered combos with their own colours, which help you read the pattern.

What's in an osu! standard beatmap

Each difficulty is a plain-text .osu file containing:

• Hit objects — every circle, slider and spinner: its time and its x/y position on the playfield, plus each slider's path shape and length.
• Circle size and approach rate — how big the objects are and how early they appear before you have to hit them.
• 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 aim (the jumps and flow between objects) and speed (how fast the objects come). Spacing, slider shapes and readability decide how a map actually feels.

osu! standard on DanceGAI

OsuGAI, DanceGAI's model for osu! standard, is available in beta: give it a song and it creates hit circles, sliders and spinners at the difficulties you pick, as a playable .osz. A standard generator has to decide where every object goes, not only when, which makes it a different problem from osu! mania — so expect rough edges, like maps that come out harder than the target or odd slider shapes.

Try it on the osu! standard beatmap generator, or read how OsuGAI works. If you also play osu! mania, ManiaGAI turns the same song into a mania mapset.

Create an osu! standard beatmap

Never played osu!? Install the game and play your first map →

The four osu! modes

• What is osu! mania? Available on DanceGAI
• osu! standard Beta on DanceGAI
• What is osu! taiko? Coming soon on DanceGAI
• What is osu! catch? Coming soon on DanceGAI