I really suck at context switching (aka multitasking). Been handling way too much at once recently, so don’t mind if I skip some daily blog posts!

New “new” forum design!

No only has the new forum been revamped (yet again) to be more usable and legible than ever before, we have now introduced topic covers! Give your threads a whole new level of personality with large cover images.

Reply easier than ever with the new snapping editor!

Also experience a wider-than-ever view of the osu! website. We now have flexible width for all you people out there with 21:9 monitors!

Account security improvements

Some updates on account security:

• I am confident that osu! has not been compromised.
• All users which were targeted so far have used the same password for 3+ years.
• Many used a very simple password, or shared the password across other services.
• All users compromised have had at least one other account compromised in the past.

Nonetheless, I am still taking further action:

• I’ve expanded the list of common passwords, and am forcefully resetting passwords of users which have these.
• We are on high alert and ready to help users out which are experiencing troubles.
• We’ve made procedures for users which have invalid email addresses so they can recover their account successfully.
• Working on adding two-factor support (email for now) to the osu! client. Should surface very soon.

We have a lot of accounts to forcefully reset due to weak passwords, and due to limited support staff, will be staggering the “rollout” of these resets over the coming weeks.

Performance updates

Been working hard on improving performance even further. We’ve got some good leads and a lot of new experimentation to do going forward. I pushed a new stable release today which is basically the most performant osu! has been ever. I am getting record frame-rates thanks to some memory allocation optimisations I added today.

A few things that are coming:

• We need to address nvidia optimus users. I have tried to reach out to nvidia for a driver-level fix, but it’s obvious they are not interested. We have some ideas on how to fix this using angle (but need exclusive fullscreen support first).
• Many users have reported 100% stutter reduction with the debug option to force glFlush operations. Because it has been so successful, I will be adding it as a permanent options. Look out for this on a stable release this or next week.
• Some users reporting stuttering are only getting it when running at unlimited frame limiters. We may artifically limit FPS or automatically enable explicit glFlush for such users in the future.

Merchandise

• Running low on tablets, but more are on their way.
• osu!keyboards are selling at a constant rate. Still working on getting OS X support back for them.
• Working on some amazing unique merch made exclusively for OWC winners. I guarantee this stuff will be better than any cash prize.