Another quick update:

• Finished implementation of the username change system. It’s live on the osu!store but I’m not allow actual changes until some further testing tomorrow morning. Currently doesn’t allow stealing inactive usernames, but that will come with time!
• Got most of the technical implementation of the coming “Letterbox” setting completed (with some help from trusty Tom94 and smoogipooo). This will allow you to have osu! running full-screen (borderless or exclusive) but only taking up a smaller portion of your screen, centered in the middle. Getting this working actually required quite a bit of work behind the scenes in the departments of RenderTargets, input handling, editor and general resolution change handling.
• In the process of implementing letterboxing, cleaned up some pretty ugly code.
• Tracked down some further fixes and improvements for the QAT group user. It will now have a proper post count, as a bonus!
• Added an interface for admins to store /mp/ link results permanently (for things like world cups).
• Finished preparations for the next tablet shipment to arrive safely. This is a huge relief.

I’m sure some of you will be asking “why letterbox? i can just run in a window!”. Well, as of Windows 8 it is very hard to disable the Desktop Window Manager. While the DWM helps make your desktop esxperience as smooth as it can be, it hinders windowed games by adding an amount of latency to them (usually around 16ms). By running in exclusive full-screen mode, games can bypass the DWM and run to their full potential.

While full-screen has worked fine until now, there are an increasing number of users upgrading to larger displays, and having issues playing osu! when it runs at such a huge physical size. Letterboxing will allow you to combine the best of both worlds, choosing a smaller game display size but also bypassing the DWM.

We are still figuring out a few kinks, but it should be live tomorrow on cutting-edge for your enjoyment.

Hard to keep up with full-on interesting blog posts at the end of a long day of coding, so please don’t mind the occasional shorter post like this :).