osu! Story Mode

[Rekunan]

To preface, a lot of this is taken from Arcaea's course mode and story, as well as dan courses in general.

Base idea: An osu! Story Mode that contains story and gameplay, served through stages, with the ability to choose what mode(s) you want to play.

Story (rough idea):
You follow the life of insert mode mascot(s) here (combination if ur doing multiple modes) as they venture through the world of Lazer, guiding them as they fight enemies and solve puzzles on their journey to discovering the big mystery.

Gameplay:
In each stage is a set of maps that you have to obtain at least a certain acc/pp/score/whatever in order to progress through the stage. The final boss of each stage would be all the maps together, but you're forced to play them one after another in one sitting. After completing a stage, you're allowed to move on to the next, as well as retry any past stages at any time you wish. As you progress through stages, they increase in difficulty.

Both:
Enemies in the story are themed/designed based on the maps in the corresponding or preceding stage.

Other:
There could also be tiered rewards for completing stages, such as an achievement medal that would increase in quality as you set better acc/pp/score/whatever on the stage.

My main want is the stages, if needed the story can be saved for later.

[peppy]

I've been saying for a decade that this would be awesome, but it requires someone to make it. The systems already exist to make storyboards, but someone has to actually get their shit together and make a campaign. I'm very sad this hasn't happened yet in 15 years (there was much more interest and even some initial progress in the early days, but these days it's only PP this PP that).

[Biokax]

I really like the idea of creating a story mode for osu! It will make the game more lively and allow new players to learn how to play in a different way than just a small tutorial map giving the bare minimum of information about the game, and also giving the mascots something else than just appearing on fan arts.

It can allow to introduce different mechanics of the game in a given order without forcing players to read the wiki or watching youtube tutorials. Like for example the introduction of new patterns, playing with two keys, the importance of the different statistics of a map, etc.

To make things happen, I think we should first communicate with the community about the desire to make a story mod, and the need to find motivated people. I'm thinking of a community contest to create a scenario in several chapters introducing the different mascots of the game, with mechanics related to the game mode.

Once the most interesting scenario is chosen, I think it will be necessary to develop in-game elements to make the mascots appear with a dialog field on the game screen, and make this tool available to the community in a new contest by asking to create the first part of the scenario by combining the mapping/storyboard/ and the use of the tool to display the mascots in order to make a level coherent with what we want of the story mode.

With the results of the contests, we can get an idea of where we want to go, and eventually look for motivated community members to make a complete story. I know it's not optimal to have a contest just to motivate players to create a story mode, but I think it's necessary to get the word out to as many players as possible on the subject.

It will also allow to show to everyone on the home screen of the game that there is a story mode in progress.

[Biokax]

The story mode indeed isn't a priority for the devs and that cool if people are motivated to help, but i think it need more official communication in order to get more people involved. What about adding a new channel to the osu!dev discord dedicated to the osu!story ?

[mk56-spn]

The story mode indeed isn't a priority for the devs and that cool if people are motivated to help, but i think it need more official communication in order to get more people involved. What about adding a new channel to the osu!dev discord dedicated to the osu!story ?

This'll become a cluste**** in 10 minutes unless people are vetted before joining. At which point you are back to the issue of burdening the developers with the project

[Walavouchey]

something like this will need organisation on a larger scale, so even if progress is communicated in osu!dev, a separate server is most definitely necessary

[peppy]

I would recommend organising a small team and not expanding too big. It will not work unless you have a core group of <5 people making it happen.

[Rekunan]

Good point yeah, luckily I think a good core has already formed, so we can start with that for now, and then expand/publicize as needed.

[Corne2Plum3]

I personally would love to see a story mode and I was also thinking how it would be implemented. Especially the maps we're going to play. The song would be only from Featured Artists, and each song would have 3 or 4 difficulties, like Arcaea or Cytus, so player form any level could play it. For STD mode I suggest the following Star Rates (it's an example and in some cases it's nice to go out of range):

• Past: <2.70*
• Present: 2.70 - 4.70*
• Future: 4.70 - 6.70*
• Beyond (if in some songs you want to put very difficult maps): >6.70*

I picked the difficulties names from Arcaea in the example above but you get the idea. I don't think using the same difficulties naming system we already have would be a good idea as there would be missing and inconsistent difficulties if we have only 3 difficulties for each song (e.g. Easy/Hard/Expert in one song, Normal/Hard/Insane in another, etc.). If you have very good and original names for the 3 (4) difficulties, it would be nice.

[mk56-spn]

There's already plans heavily underway

[Rekunan]

Adding on, some of these ideas we do agree with and will probably use, such as only Featured Artists. And to not reveal too much, there's probably also going to be some ideas from my original discussion post that're scrapped depending on how the team progresses.

[Rekunan]

Core team has been formed and work has started.

[Sr3qt]

Are there any progress updates? How is the development going?

[Tenexxt]

Are there any progress updates? How is the development going?

i think it wont be revaled for now, like, how game trailers are mostlly published max 1 year before relase, mostlly below 6 months, and some games even relase on the same day (like Hi-Fi Rush)
I cant speak for the team, but looking at how osu is an indie, the team was formed 1,5 years ago, id say they have all/most of the story writen, asuming the team members were prioritizing the writing of it, and wasn't made of people who already do a lot of stuff for the game. Now for the gameplay, id say it will be the same, it'll just have cutscenes and stuff to make a story( if i was guessing, it will most likely work like Persona, mostlly dialogue, but it doesn't feel like a chore reading it, and still has a lot of gameplay), as for the songs, probably every song will be from featured artists, and some songs (i think mostly in key moments) would be a orginal one (aka, song made for osu specifically from a FA, in case you aren't familiar with the term)
if im going to guess (if the SM will be devided to chapters[most likelly will be]), the first chapter would relase in max, and i mean MAX 4 years (again, osu is an indie, a big one, but that doesn't change as much as everybody would like to)

[TheAlan404]

hello yes i would like to give some stupid ideas

Story (rough idea):
You follow the life of insert mode mascot(s) here (combination if ur doing multiple modes) as they venture through the world of Lazer, guiding them as they fight enemies and solve puzzles on their journey to discovering the big mystery.

In my opinion, this is bad. The gameplay idea is good but the story idea seems too set in stone, i think it would be better if the story wasn't centered around some mascot (an already defined character) and the generic player, like yourself. That change would make the story more centered towards the player and would make it easier for the players to project themselves or get invested in the story more. You can see this in something like Just Shapes and Beats where the character you are playing as doesnt have much already defined personality, or in Undertale where you dont have to conform to a character's personality and rules.

I agree with Biokax - teaching new players the mechanics of the game via this story mode would be amazing. As for the story, in my opinion, it could have something to do with how the game works maybe? Inspired from other games (JSAB, Fez, etc) maybe the game could "break" and you would complete beatmaps to somehow help fix it? Aspire maps would be useful for this maybe?

tldr: mascot is predefined therefore it might break immersion so having the main character be yourself aka the player could be better

[Givikap120]

Make a lazer mod introduction campaign

[Sr3qt]

Does anybody know what happened to the development of story mode? I cannot seem to find any other mention of how much progress has been made. I am assuming development has stopped.

[Tenexxt]

i think it wont be revaled for now, like, how game trailers are mostlly published max 1 year before relase, mostlly below 6 months, and some games even relase on the same day (like Hi-Fi Rush)
I cant speak for the team, but looking at how osu is an indie, the team was formed 1,5 years ago, id say they have all/most of the story writen, asuming the team members were prioritizing the writing of it, and wasn't made of people who already do a lot of stuff for the game. Now for the gameplay, id say it will be the same, it'll just have cutscenes and stuff to make a story( if i was guessing, it will most likely work like Persona, mostlly dialogue, but it doesn't feel like a chore reading it, and still has a lot of gameplay), as for the songs, probably every song will be from featured artists, and some songs (i think mostly in key moments) would be a orginal one (aka, song made for osu specifically from a FA, in case you aren't familiar with the term)
if im going to guess (if the SM will be devided to chapters[most likelly will be]), the first chapter would relase in max, and i mean MAX 4 years (again, osu is an indie, a big one, but that doesn't change as much as everybody would like to)

[Tenexxt]

Imagine osu! story mode will hit you the same way as Persona 3 and Cyberpunk. For a game that looks 'cute' that would be kinda funny, but i deffinetly would like it

[Sr3qt]

I dmed the devs and they confirmed that they were still working on the game, and that no public announcement is planned.

[okolenmi]

Nice. I hope it will be released before the next decade.

[Tenexxt]

Nice. I hope it will be released before the next decade.

Don't worry, it will release before silksong 100%