Xinnoh
commented
5 years ago Agreed with most of the stuff here, visual mods main reason for not getting use is because their cover size changes with combo, having a consistent visual is far more important for mania/taiko.
Since HD/FL/FI do not give any score bonus, I think it would be a good idea to allow players to choose their cover size. Scroll speeds affect how much needs to be covered, and different players prefer different amounts of the screen covered. random example https://youtu.be/JuAL51tLov0?t=2450
LastExceed
I'd like to implement the vision mods for mania, but before I do that there are a couple of aspects that i think should be discussed regarding their current state in stable. When discussing these it is important to keep in mind that many mania players use vision mods (or a skinned lane cover) out of preference.
black covers or fading notes In stable all 3 vision mods (FadeIn, Hidden, FlashLight) use black covers to appy the handicap. I think switching to fading the notes to/from transparency for FI and HD would make sense as it fits better with the name and mod description of FadeIn and makes Hidden in mania more similar to Hidden in standard. FL on the other hand should keep the black covers for the same reasons.
shadows scaling with combo In stable the shadows of FI and HD start quite small and grow with combo (reaching a maximum at 480) Those who use these mods out of preference often also slap a skinned cover on top of it to keep the shadow at a minimum size as the scaling (especially the sudden reveal of almost 50% of the stage after a combo break) is very confusing. Further more it should be pointed out that unlike osu!standard, combo in mania isn't important and few players care about it, which means the scaling puts emphasis on an aspect that many players otherwise don't even pay attention to, instead of something actually important (e.g. acc, which is everything in mania). I don't think the scaling should be removed entirely as these mods would then be no different to a skinned lane cover, but it should be reduced.
shadow positioning The HD shadow is positioned relative to the Judgement line while the FI and FL shadow have an absolute position. An absolute positioned shadow is bad as it means that the intensity of the handicap can be adjusted via skinning. e.g. when using FadeIn you can greatly increase the visible area by moving the judgement line all the way to the bottom of the screen, and a similar advantage can be gained when playing with FL using the same method. The shadow position should be relative to the judgement line (just like HD) so no advantage can be gained via skinning.
scrollspeed In stable the shadow doesn't take scrollspeed into account. This definitely needs to change. HD is harder for players with a lower scrollspeed while its barely a challenge for players with high scrollspeed, FL in turn is insanely hard at high speeds because the notes are visible for such a short period which is why not many players use it and FI requires you to go so low with scrollspeed to be even playable that very few can handle it and there's just a single player in the world that uses it by default. For reference the average scrollspeed is around 27, +-7 and you have most players covered (except for beginners of course). For Flashlight to be somewhat playable you have to go below 20 and with FadeIn anything above 12 is inhuman (and thats already assuming you moved the judgement line to the bottom of the screen). The shadows should scale relative to scrollspeed and for Flashlight it might even be worth to consider changing the width of the gap depending on scrollspeed.
SVs In stable the shadows don't adjust to SVs This means that when using HD, a note that is invisible for 500ms during 1.0 SV is invisible for a full second during 0.5 SV, making slowjams (0.1 SV) near impossible with HD. But simply setting the shadow size relative to the SV could be very confusing during shutter SVs or nullifying SVs in general (rapid change between high and low speed to cancel out each other back to normal scrollspeed). one solution could be fading notes individually based on time instead of position, but this only works if we decide to switch from a cover to fading notes to transparency and could still be confusing as notes would sometimes start to fade at different locations.
Let's hear some opinions on this.