And so we approach the end of another year. We got quite a bit done this year, but as always seems to happen some “deadlines” have slipped past us. For those that still have a glimpse of hope, sorry but the osu!next design implementation will not be complete this year. Some people have been mentioning it recently like it’ll be a huge drop (basically like a new product) but let me stress that as with everything I do, it’ll be a gradual update of what we currently have, and you will be able to follow along on the Cutting Edge release stream.

With that out of the way, I have a few updates.

• OWC winners (1st 2nd and 3rd) will actually be getting a limited edition mug on top of the aforementioned prizes! It completely slipped my mind that we had already completed the design, and were waiting on production run to complete. Will reveal it on here as soon as we receive them!
• The osu!store has officially shut for this year. Thanks to everyone for your support. We truly hope your purchases have improved you quality of life in some small way. We do have a lot in store for 2016, with many new products in planning or production currently, so if you’ve been after something we don’t yet offer keep an eye on the store or my blog!
• I put some work into the background saving system (which handles writing beatmap and score databases as well as all the configuration files to disk). Where previously saves would only happen when osu! was made inactive for a certain amount of time, now they will happen a lot more often, while still avoiding any performance degradation during gameplay. As a result, it should now be a whole lot harder for a single crash to result in data loss.
• Due to a few remaining issues with keyboard sounds, the new sound scheme I said will be pushed to cutting edge probably won’t happen until next week. In its current state it would likely piss the majority of users off, so that’s probably for the best.

This may be my last blog for the year (no promises) as I will be spending Christmas with family and friends, so if you don’t hear from me again, have an amazing Christmas & New Year. Make sure to take occasional breaks from osu! and spend some time with your real-life acquaintances - they will definitely appreciate it!

Let’s make 2016 the best year osu! has seen yet.