Hello! We’ve now exceeded one month since my last post. I’ve had this post in a draft status for quite some time, unable to post it because not everything had come together yet. Also been working across the board to catch up on a heap of stuff. Rather than just focus on lazer, let’s take a moment to cover everything that’s happened in this time.

Anime Expo 2017

This experience was absolutely amazing. Being able to meet people face-to-face – especially many which I have been dealing with on a regular basis – was the best thing I took away from the event. There’s so much to cover from this event alone, but here’s a few things summarised:

Going forward I’m going to continue my efforts to do some kind of “official” meet-up once a year in different places around the world.

We have a heap of awesome video footage, which will be edited down into a digestible format once I find the spare time.

Some serious discussions were had, resulting in some changes to how I run things going forward (in the best interest of the community). Look forward to a few new projects surfacing before the end of the year that should really help bring the community even closer together than before.

osu!bancho

multiplayer commands for all

We’ve released the ability for any user to use the previously exclusive multiplayer room commands. This allows very fine control over rooms in ways that were previously not possible. It is especially useful to people running tournaments, but can also be used by room owners in a host-rotation scenario where the owner can now retain control even after giving away host. Check out the full documentation reference to learn more.

online state tracking

Web profiles will now (finally!) show up-to-date “last online” times as long as the user is connected to bancho. Previously, it would only be updated when a user visited the website. Note that right now even AFK users are considered “online”, but we may look at making this smarter going forward.

osu!web

The new website has received some new features and improvements!

search

A new global contextual search that searches everything at once!

You can also drill down into details, refining your search to a specific area and more. Forum specific advanced search options are also still present, of course!

A huge applause goes out to nanaya for realising this feature. By no means finished, but in a very usable state (personally I think it works better than the options we have on the live site!).

friends listing

The friends listing page has now been realised on the new site. With the addition of online state tracking above, you can now see all your friends which are online in-game accurately from the web! Also, it’s quite pretty to look at!

Thanks to nekodex for the sound implementation of this system.

support purchase page

Supporting the game will in the near future be moved to the osu!store, rather than being a stand-alone page. While the preferred method of supporting is still using the old site (it has more payment methods available for the time being), you can preview this feature already here and even try using it if paypal is your preferred payment method :).

Thanks to notbakaneko for the implementation of this!

user cards

Hover a username anywhere on the new site and you’ll now see a user card popup. This allows you to get an overview of the user’s details, see their only status, add them at a friend or access their profile for more in-depth information.

Thanks to nekodex for implementing these cards as part of the friend system!

osu!lazer

So, it’s been two builds since the last time I made a post. Forgive me if I skip over anything, but there’s a lot to touch on so let’s get started! If you’re more of the hands-on type, you can go and check out v2017.717.0 right now, with an insane number of additions, improvements and bug fixes.

Main menu visualiser

New UI sound effects

This is still much of a WIP, so you’ll still see some changes and additions going forward. Consider this a glimpse at what we are going to aim for in terms of sound effects

In-game profiles

As part of a push to move everything to being accessible in-game, you can now access user profiles without being dumped out to a browser. Full stats are still a work-in-progress, but it should give you an idea of what you can expect in the near future!

Settings improvements

Redesigned the UX of the settings sidebar to feel better and avoid hiding the UI behind it. Now the whole settings menu expands, and the sidebar automatically contracts after selecting a section you wish to visit.

Lots, lots more

If you want to check out all the intricacies of lazer which have changed, please check the full changelogs! There’s plenty more small changes, optimisations and fixes that deserve attention there. I just can’t cover them all in this already-too-long post.

Thanks for reading until the end. Obviously posts this long won’t be a regular thing and I’ll do my best to return to normal programming from hereon out.