osu!mania skin elements explained

this video will serve as a checklist for everything you need for designing a Mania skin I'm mostly talking about the graphical elements so the skin config file won't be covered in this video although I will mention it in specific cases where it heavily affects a graphic also this isn't a tutorial or how-to type of video so don't expect in-depth steps for image editing software let's start with the note shape this is the fundamental element of gameplay that you'll mainly be reading when it comes to Mania the most common shapes you'll see players use are circles bars or arrows there's also hybrid shapes a lot of creativity can be had here while it is preferential on what you choose each shape has its own advantages or disadvantages when it comes to skinning and reading for example circles are easy to work with they have infinite lines of symmetry and that allows you to take measurements from any Edge and have them be equal to get uniform positioning most image editing software also has tools based on circles arrows on the other hand have one line of symmetry and are a bit irregular in nature drawing something like this may be difficult arrows can look good for four key because of the four directions but extrapolating something like this to higher key counts may be challenging to make look good though there are several tin key Arrow players setting examples for us there's also the issue of depending on how many colors you use and of what direction you'll need to make copies of each Direction based on different colors which just takes longer to do bars are similar to circles in that they're more simple and are easy to work with for multiple key counts most bar Skins are smaller than circles and arrows so they appear on the screen for a shorter amount of time this also has the added effect of preventing certain patterns from overlapping when the density is high as you can see each note shape has its own way of affecting reading and it really comes down to what benefits you prefer and what you're willing to work with when I bring up note colors I'm talking about if and what style of column coloring you choose to use as well as the colors themselves let's start with the monochrome style first I've seen many skins where all the notes are white pink sometimes White one or two of the lanes are shifted up in brightness or a completely different color I guess the main thing here is to have a good contrast with the background so there's exactly no ambiguity on how many notes there are on the screen so yeah while something like this may seem oversimplified and boring it's perfectly serviceable now once you start getting into s key and up it may be beneficial to switch to a column colored style the idea here is that you get into the habit of relating specific colors and their relative positioning to the exact fingers on your hand this is useful because it's hard to focus on the entire Playfield which can span the width of most of your monitor in these higher key counts take a look at these two skins the blur effect is representing your peripheral vision as you can see on the left side you're able to make out exactly which finger and how many notes are on the screen on the right side they're all the same and it may be hard to tell exactly which finger is required for which note if you're not directly looking at it even on lower key counts I like to have separate left and right colors to add neatness these O2 Jam colors are commonly found in a lot of skins tin key Skins are based around these variations your skin doesn't have to follow these colors exactly you can use any set of colors you'd like but I will say try to keep the color choices consistent from the different key counts and the different hands for instance if you choose green for the middle finger and seven key left hand it should also be green for the middle finger and 10 key for the right hand lastly I want to mention color balancing notice how these colors appear to be of the same set or color palette being able to balance of colors like this keep specific columns from sticking out and becoming distracting an easy way to achieve this is by using a hue and saturation tool in an image editing software though you may not always be able to get the exact colors you want I had this issue with maybe a ghosta skin most of his notes were really dark on my screen yet the middle finger notes were so bright and distracting I should mention that different monitors May display colors and brightness differently however color balancing is still an important aspect the section is going to be short I'm not the biggest long note fan or expert the long note head can either be the same or different from the regular notes some players like to switch it up with the colors in my skin I use a different style of notes here for the body it's a rectangle usually the main thing here you're going to be dictating is how wide it is relative to the notes themselves some players choose to have their long notes animated or to have gradients indicating the duration of the note which requires the note body cell to be set to zero double check this the long note tail can either match the relative shape of the notes be flat and cut off in the middle or do something completely different a more relative shape here might be easier for some players to understand but for me when it's flat I know exactly when the release timing is supposed to happen directly in the middle of the receptor then there's this Percy style which is skin through the tail element I would only bother with this if you're an experienced player and you know what you're doing you can customize the size and positioning of the stage columns now unless you're replicating the style of another game or you have a different reason I recommend keeping the stage in the center of the screen which will require some trial and error to find the exact number the column sizes found in Skins are usually between 40 and 70 for higher key counts you might need to use a smaller number to keep all the elements within your field of view it may also be good to use the same size columns between different key counts so you won't have to change your scroll speed or your reading too much though this can vary using smaller notes can help things appear less cluttered on your screen but you'll then reach a point to where objects are too small and it becomes difficult to see anything adding custom rails here can help distinguish the edges of the stage area and they can also look nice you can add different Lane colors here to mirror any note coloring that you have going on I usually just have them alternate so that each adjacent finger is distinguished you have a lot of options when it comes to making the receptor graphic but an important aspect to consider is making sure the receptors lines up exactly where the notes land and that the size of the receptor matches that of the notes using a smaller or bigger column size tends to make the receptor image stretch in weird ways so you have to stretch the image itself in the opposite direction to overcorrect for that a good way to trial and error for this is by pausing when a long note is being held it'll stop exactly on the hit position and you can make any necessary Corrections speaking of which the hit position determines how much vertical space is active in the Playfield and raising or lowering this number will add or take away the amount of screen time the notes are active a similar thing can be achieved by using a screen cover this is completely preferential however some players might be distracted by the notes falling beneath the receptor or above as are no longer active and can really build up and be distracting you can block out these notes by doing the following lastly we have the judgment and combo even though this seems like a minor skin element it's still quite important as it serves as the focal point of your reading and how you'll be getting the majority of your feedback the 320 graphic can be a little distracting especially when it bounces between the different judgments so it might be a good idea to do the stage bottom trick here with this you're able to animate the text however ever you want without it being too bouncy this may seem weird to some players always having a Max judgment here but the way I try to think about it is you're always hitting 320s until you're not in which the worst judgment should pop up and sufficiently cover this some players like to use dots or stars to keep this from being distracting I use bars and have the judgments be represented with different colors the combo number can also have the same issue of being too animated shortening the combo numbers kind of helps with this but I usually don't mind this one being too animated monospace fonts can keep numbers like this nice and balanced and that's all of the main elements of a Mania skin as I said I mostly skipped everything in the skin config file but I might cover that in a separate video leave a comment below if you have any questions or additional skinning tips and thanks for watching I like to have separate left hand I like to have left hand right what did I write here [Music]