Your map must comply with this criteria. Unless specified that you may justify a criteria break, these rules must be enforced as-is.
This criteria may be changed at any time. Changes do not apply retroactively, and will be listed in our Discord.
¶ R1. General criteria and map setup
- The map's BPM must be set to one of the song's BPM or a multiple of the song's BPM.
- The map must have lined up the audio’s BPM and the grid’s BPM as best as possible, through audio file setup or through the use of BPM events.
- The audio file must be of acceptable quality, and in the
.ogg format (distributed as .egg is allowed).
- An appropriate cover image must be present, of at least 256x256 px resolution, with a 1:1 aspect ratio, and in
.png, .jpg or .jpeg format.
- Song Time Offset must be unused or set to zero.
- Shuffle and Shuffle Period values must be unused or set to zero.
- All defined (official) color schemes must provide values for all colors.
- Wall width and duration may not be set to values of 0 or lower. Wall height may not be set to 0. Wall height may be negative as long as the wall does not reach inside the 4 standard lanes of the mapping grid.
- Chain squish factor may not be set to a value of zero or lower.
- Object beat numbers may not be negative or higher than the final beat number of the song in the editor.
- Walls may not extend outside of the song's length (beat + duration <= final beat number of the song in the editor).
- NJS events may not use invalid or unsupported easings. The following easings are unsupported and cannot be used: (In/Out)Sine, (In/Out)Cubic, (In/Out)Quart, (In/Out)Quint, (In/Out)Expo. Other easing values that do not correspond to a valid easing also cannot be used.
Invalid values can cause issues such as inconsistent behavior, broken maps, or full on game crashes. Unsupported values do not immediately cause issues but could change behavior in future game updates. For these reasons, neither of them are allowed.
- Any map that is dependent on mods or programs that are not explicitly allowed are not allowed.
There are currently no mods that may be set as a map requirement.
¶ D. The map must give sufficient time before and after the last note
- There must be at least 1.5 seconds of time before any interactable objects. (2 seconds is recommended)
- There must be at least 2 seconds of time after the last interactable objects.
- Misplaced notes or mismaps must be fixed when found.
- The map from first note to last note or chain link must be at least 45 seconds in length.
- There has to be a significant difference from one difficulty to another, either from within the mapset or from one mapset to another of the same song. If a difficulty is at least 40% identical to a difficulty in another mapset, only the oldest will be rankable.
This difference may be determined either by differential analysis, or by subjective overview of the difficulties by ranking team members.
- Each note must be mapped within 12ms of a chosen timing point, which must be chosen with substantial reasoning.
- Timing points may only exist on sufficiently audible sounds.
For instruments, the timing point is either the start or peak of a sound.
For vocals, the timing point can most commonly be a point in the vocalization, or breath. Most often at the start of the associated sound.
- Intended rhythm timing may be used on vocals and instrumental sounds with slow attacks (such as violins) that can be determined to mistakenly be off-beat. This requires ample justification. It is crucial that intended rhythm is only used when the given sound is determined to be mistakenly off-beat. This decision must be agreed upon with the ranking team. Sounds mapped through intended rhythm should have their timing points selected in as consistent of a way as possible in line with R2B.
Using intended rhythm entails mapping the given off-beat sound to the nearest snapped beat, using a common precision such as 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/12, or 1/16.
For intended rhythm to be allowed, it must be determined that the sound is off-time by mistake, and is not off-time in a consistent manner. The purpose of this determination is to only allow intended rhythm mapping when a sound is mistakenly off-time, and precision timing it would be detrimental to the map. Intended rhythm may only be used in line with this purpose, with sufficient justification. Justifications that go against the purpose of this criteria are strictly not allowed (e.g. intended rhythm mapping to save time).
While determining if intended rhythm may be used, it is crucial that the way the sound fits into the composition is considered, alongside the context of the timing points. Especially when looking at singular vocals, this will bring clarity into the intentionality of the sound placement (e.g. a vocal may be 1/16th late for tension or emotional effect. This may not be snapped to a different beat number.)
Examples:
A vocal intentionally started 1/16th early or late does NOT qualify for intended rhythm mapping, as it is an intentional decision. (e.g. when done for emphasis or an emotional effect.)
A section of sounds offset by 1/8th or 1/16th consistently does NOT qualify, since it is consistent and likely intended.
A section where vocals or slow attack instruments (such as violins) vary wildly from being 1/8th early, to 1/16th late, to on beat, etc. DOES quality for intended rhythm mapping.
A singular instance of an off time vocal or sounds with a slow attack may also be mapped through intended rhythm if it can be sufficiently reasonned that it was a mistake, such as when comparing with vocals/similar sounds around it, and how it fits into the composition.
- The timing point must be consistent across all instances of an instrumental sound.1
- The timing point determination must be consistent for vocal mapping. This must be consistent between vocals of similar style and cadence.2
- Different styles of vocals may apply different timing point determination, especially across sections of the song, when done consistently.3
- Vocal mapping requires a large degree of subjective interpretation to determine the timing point. Therefore, a mapper is allowed to justify any timing point along the sounds length, within common sense. It is crucial that this determination is kept consistent through following B2 and B3.
1 e.g. if you decide to time a sound at its start, you must always time it at its start
2 e.g. if vocals of a particular style are mapped at their first vocalization, all vocals with a similar style and cadence must have a consistent timing point. Note that the same word sung differently may use a different timing point.
3 e.g. quiet and heavily vocalized vocals may be timed differently, when done consistently across the map.
- When a rhythm choice is made in a section, it must be consistently followed until the song section ends. You cannot include or exclude a single instance of a sound without ample justification.1
- Rhythm choice changes can only occur when supported by the music. A change cannot occur if the music does not change as well.
1 e.g. a snare hit that is mapped consistently for 15 beats, may not remain unmapped for exclusively the 11th beat if the section and rhythm choice are still ongoing. And a vocal that is not mapped for 5 beats, may not be mapped on the 6th beat if it will continue to be unmapped after the 6th beat.
- Objects may not be placed in a way where they intersect in the Z dimension. Objects that are placed within 0.5m of one another in the Z dimension on the same grid cell are considered to intersect.1
- Objects (excluding walls) may not intersect with walls.
- Arcs are exempt from these rules.
1 To calculate an intersection: (Beat Duration) / (BPM / 60) * NJS >= 0.5m
- The pre-swing of a note may not be blocked by a note of the opposite color.
- The pre-swing of a note may not be blocked by a chain head or link of the opposite color.
- The top of a note's good hitbox cannot overlap the top of an opposite colored note's bad hitbox by more than 20%
- In a slider, the swing-path of one hand cannot overlap the badcut hitbox of the other hand's notes by more than 20% if the note would still exist before it was hit by the correct hand
- Patterns that involve the use of excessive notes to prolong a swing are not allowed.1
- Multi-note patterns must have a single swing speed throughout. This may be considered instant for multi-note patterns with no duration.
- The minimum effective slider precision is 1/16th (or 1/8th for a 2-note window, as the missing note should be counted for effective precision.) relative to the mapping precision in that section.2
- Slider Swing speed must be consistent per section of the map. This may be overruled with sufficient justification.
- Sliders and window sliders must have the same effective precision within a section.
- Chain duration cannot exceed 200% of the average effective slider duration.
1 e.g. pauls, poodles, dot spam, chain link spam.
2 i.e. mapping at 1/8th precision has the minimums of 1/32nd and 1/16th respectively.
Effective precision is the precision between each note in a slider. For window sliders the left out note should be counted too, as the swing still takes time to travel the distance.
A different section is often signified by a significant change in sound, a change to a different precision, or a significant bpm change.
- Swings must be able to hit all notes of the multi-note swing at their cut angle in the center of the note without deviating more than 45 degrees from the starting angle. Dot notes do not need to be hit at a specific cut angle.
- Swings may only deviate in one direction along the entire swing path.1
- Swing path deviations must occur at a reasonable radius, as determined by Ranking Staff.
- Notes in a multi-note swing are assumed to be cut one by one in the order they are placed. If notes are placed on the same beat, they are assumed to be cut in the optimal order to pass criteria B1-3.
- Chain heads and links fall under the same B rules as notes.
1 i.e a swing may deviate 45 degrees, but may not deviate -45 degrees afterwards in the same swing.
¶ C. Patterns may not encourage hand claps (example)
- Patterns must not involve a handclap risk that is unreasonable for the general difficulty and style of the map, as determined by Ranking Staff.
- Handclap risk may be pointed out based on replays of existing plays. If a similar handclap risk is demonstrated in a notable amount of replays, it may impact the conclusion of Ranking Staff. Replays may also serve as a way to justify a pattern after being deemed an unreasonable handclap risk.
A handclap in this context is recognized as both hands/controllers attempting to occupy the same position in space at the same time.
¶ R5. Vision and Readability
- The minimum time required to avoid vision blocks is determined by an equation that takes star ratings into account. The equation can be found here. This is automated in the AutoModder plugin.
- If the time between the vision blocking object and the blocked object is less than the minimum time, the vision block will need to be evaluated in-game or with ArcViewer, and justification may be required.
- A hittable object in the outer lane that would be considered vision blocked, may be considered visible if it is closer than 150ms to the vision blocking object.
- A note or chain in the middle lane, bottom layer that would be considered vision blocked, may be considered visible if it is closer than 75ms to the vision blocking object and follows parity.
- Bombs are exempt from A1-3 if they are part of a cluster of bombs that is partially visible with sufficient context to determine that it is a bomb cluster from the visible bombs alone.
- Bombs are exempt from A1-3 if they do not force the player to move their sabers or body.
Vision blocks are determined by this equation.
- Notes and chains may not be on the opposite side of a wall or bomb wall compared to where the player will go, assuming that the player will always choose one of the center lanes, and will only crouch if necessary. A player position beneath a crouch wall is not considered to be on the opposite side of that wall.
- Bombs may not be on the opposite side of a wall compared to where the player will go, assuming that the player will always choose one of the center lanes.
- Walls covering the bottom of a lane are considered to be hiding the spawn animations of the objects in the lane from their start to 0.25 beats after their end. Affected objects require justification to be allowed.
- Bombs that start unobscured by a wall and can reasonably be expected to continue are exempted from rule R5B2.
- Resets must be backed up by a musical element
- Resets must be intentional and not a byproduct of a different pattern
- Resets caused by triangles must be accompanied by the same musical elements represented by the notes of the triangle
- Resets must have visual aid through the use of bombs or arcs or attempt to indicate how they are played* by:
- Having each note within a reset pattern be rotated within 45 degrees of the previous note
- Each reset is separated 0.5 beats or the next note is moved along the x-axis to accommodate the given rotation required by current parity state
- If a given reset pattern has not been aided visually, a reset pattern must have an odd number of swings (that occur in the same direction) or end on a visual aided reset*
* These rules may be ignored if a similar reset has been introduced before 1/3 of the map's length or 30 seconds, whichever is longer.
¶ R6. Chains and Arcs
- Chains and their links cannot be part of the first 16 notes of the map. This is to prevent a scoring bug related to building combo.
- Chains must not be in reverse direction, the head must always precede the links in time.
- The head of a chain is considered the starting position of the swing and its cut direction must lead into its chain links. If the head is a dot note, the cut direction must be considered down.
- Chains cannot change in direction by more than 45 degrees from the starting position and angle of the head note.
- Chain heads must be inside the 4x3 grid.
- Chain links may extend one additional lane width outside of the grid, but may not extend higher or lower than the grid.
- Chains must be at least 12.5% links versus air/empty-space
- Chains will be judged for vision blocks more harshly if the chain to air/empty-space ratio is above or equal to 33%. Under this amount they will be considered with more leniency.
- The amount of time between the last link of a chain and any note after must be equal to or higher than the chain's duration.
- This rule is applied separately per hand.
- Connecting an arc to a bomb is not allowed, as it causes a scoring bug that adds unobtainable note score to the bomb.
- Chains must have a head note.
- Chains must have at least one visible link (chain sc value >= 2)
- Bombs may not be placed directly in the pre or post swing path of a note or chain head/link.
- There must be ample time to avoid bombs after hitting a note if the swing path leads into the bomb's eventual position.
- A light of at least 50 brightness must be active from 250ms before a bomb until it has passed.
- Bombs may not be placed in such a way that a player can only avoid them by putting a saber fully outside of the 4x3 grid.
- Walls should leave enough space between their boundaries to allow a player to comfortably avoid the walls.
- Walls may not give the player less than 250ms of time to avoid their boundaries, or less than 235ms in exceptional cases1.
- Dodge walls that force the player to move their head more than 2 times per second require justification.
A.2: Assuming minimum wall duration, this means dodge walls may not force the player to move their head more than 3.8 times per second or at 1/1 227 BPM, or more than 4 times per second or at 1/1 241 BPM in exceptional cases1
1 (requires justification and approval from NQT/RT)
- Walls cannot be placed in a manner that forces the player to move into the outer lanes. One of the middle lanes must be accessible at all times.
- Walls with a duration longer than 13.8ms are legal and may be placed freely.
- Walls with a duration shorter than 13.8ms must trail behind legal walls in the same lane by no more than 250ms;
- Or trail behind any wall in the same lane by no more than 100ms.
- During or after a crouch wall for 0.5 beats, the notes on the bottom row in the 2 middle columns are considered vision blocks.
- During a crouch wall, the middle layer is the highest rankable note placement in all lanes.
- A half wall counts as a crouch wall when all available center lanes are covered by a half wall, forcing you to crouch.
- NJS cannot reach below the lower limit of 1 NJS at any point in the map, even when used for visual effects or when no interactable objects are present.
- You should avoid using lower NJS than needed to achieve your desired effects. Values below 4 NJS may require justification. Highly dense maps will be subject to more scrutiny due to a greater performance impact.
Game performance is affected by the lowest NJS reached at any point in the map, even when this NJS is not currently active. The performance impact can be severe with extremely low NJS values (such as 0.1 NJS), especially when combined with dense maps.
- The base NJS value must be between the minimum and maximum NJS used in interactable portions of the map. You cannot set the base NJS value outside the range used within the map, or in a range only used in non-interactable portions of the map.
- The base NJS value should match what is most used or typical within the map. Deviations from this may require justification.
- Objects that are far outside the normal hittable range cannot enter hittable range as a result of NJS changes. This happens when visual effects use excessively low NJS values.
- Hittable range is considered a distance of 1.5 meters away from the cut plane.
Some easing types are currently unsupported by the game and cannot be used in NJS events. Please see R1.B.8 for details.
- There must be on average at least one light event per beat, unless discussed with Ranking Staff.
- The use of external tools, such as Lightmap, Lolighter or Automapper, to generate a lightshow is allowed.
- Extreme strobing or other extreme flashing is not allowed if it significantly impacts the visibility of the map.
- Environment manipulation through the V3 lighting system (GLS), or Chroma, cannot significantly hinder vision of the map.1
1 e.g. moving an environment element into the note lane and blocking the notes from being seen, or blocking vision of the notes with a significant number of lasers
¶ A. The song must be officially available and not under high risk of getting removed
- The song must be officially1 available at the time of ranking through any of the following sources:
- Official streaming sources (e.g., Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp, or SoundCloud).
- Official album or single releases, digital or physical, distributed at any point before ranking.
- Official compilations or soundtracks.
- Promotional releases that are officially authorized and/or distributed (e.g., limited editions, event-exclusive CDs, or digital downloads).
- Songs previously subjected to a DMCA takedown on the hosting map repository may not be ranked.
- The mapper is responsible for providing evidence that the song meets these criteria at the time of ranking (when asked).
- One singular official release must be used as the metadata source for the map2. If there are multiple releases with conflicting metadata, only one should be chosen and adhered to.
- Metadata sources should be prioritized in the order of accuracy and control the artist has. For example, albums and Bandcamp offer complete control for the artist to correctly list their metadata, while Spotify tends to change "feat. artist" into a secondary name in the artist field. As an example, in cases like this, it must be reasoned if the artist is a main author or a featured artist. If it is a featured artist, it should be noted down as "feat. artist" instead of being included in the song author field.
1 A release is considered "official" if it is distributed or authorized by the artist, their label, or the copyright holder.
2 Official translations or romanizations may only be available separately from all song listings. In this case, it is appropriate to look towards other listings for guidance, used as a supplementary source of officially recognized translation/romanization.
- If parts of the official metadata is not searchable in-game (non-alphanumeric characters, such as Japanese or special characters), you should use official translations or romanization when none are available. This applies to all map metadata fields.
- Official translations and romanizations get priority and must become your chosen singular metadata source under R11A4. You can choose freely between translation or romanization, but the most broadly recognized option is preferred.
- Any romanization method that is broadly recognized may be used.1
- When romanizing from languages where characters have multiple different readings, such as Japanese, the officially chosen readings must be used.2
- Romanization and translation can be done in many different ways and taking liberties may be necessary to get the best result. These are allowed as judged within common sense and the artists' intentions, such as matching the pronunciation more closely. For this reason, official translations and romanizations, even when not accurate to romanization standards, are preferred when available.
1 Some romanization methods produce unsearchable characters in-game (such as ō), it's allowed to modify these romanizations to become searchable.
2 Names in particular often have specific chosen readings that won't be reflected by automatic romanization. The correct reading must be used.
Examples
Translation:
The author name "かめりあ" would become "Camellia"
Romanization:
The song name むすんでひらいて romanized through Hepburn would become "Musunde Hiraite".
Unsearchable romanization results:
The author name "ヰ世界情緒" would become "isekaijōcho" when romanized through Hepburn. Since the "ō" is not typeable in-game, you should use a different romanization technique, such as Wapuro which produces "Isekaijoucho".
Officially chosen readings:
In the previous example, the result is "Isekaijoucho", despite that the reading of ヰ is "wi". This is an example of name readings being different from the direct readings.
The "w" is left out when used in this name, since the use of the obsolete character ヰ is only a stylistic choice, and intended to just stand for い (i).
- Special characters that break up a metadata field in a way that makes it hard to search are not allowed. Ones placed in such a way that a legible word is still fully typeable and leads to correct search results do not have to be substituted. The ranking team has the final decision over these cases.
- Special characters such as Ω, Δ, ∞, that cannot be typed on the in-game keyboard can be substituted by either:
- A typeable roman character that looks alike (such as Ω -> O)
- Or the name of the symbol written out (such as Δ -> delta) when appropriate.
- Substitutions should be determined with common sense and be reasonably intuitive and rememberable.
- The map's song name must be the name of the song from the official metadata, including correct capitalization.
- The song name field must not include anything described in R11E.
Examples
| Correct |
Incorrect |
| crystallized |
Crystallized |
| Tetoris |
Tetoris (feat. Kasane Teto) |
| Turn into the sea |
海に化ける |
- The map's sub-name must contain the following tags if applicable from the official metadata. Certain tags may be required even if the information was not included in official metadata.
- Tags should follow a logical order, based on how fundemental the tag is1. All tags without parentheses should come before those with.
- If a tag is the source of a featured tag, that featured tag needs to be placed within the parentheses of that tag2.
1 A remix of a song originally featuring an artist should be written as "feat. Nanahira (Camellia Remix)", even when parentheses are used for the featuring tag.
2 i.e. If a remix is what the artist is featured in, it should be placed within the parentheses of the remix tag such as "(Camellia Remix feat. Nanahira)".
Below follows a list of metadata categories followed by examples of permitted styling.
- Remixes
- (Camellia Remix)
- (Hardcore Remix)
- Note that the name of the remix does not have to be a genre or author.
- Official speed/duration modifications
- (Short Ver.)
- (Long Ver.)
- Themed names for these tags within the offical metadata may be used instead.
- Unofficial speed/duration modifications
- (Short Edit)
- (Sped up Edit)
- (Nightcore Edit)
- Featured artists or collaborations
- feat. Hatsune Miku
- (feat. Hatsune Miku)
- Use of parentheses should follow the official metadata.
- Covers
- (Nanahira Cover)
- (Covered by Nanahira)
- (Self cover)
- If the song is a cover, this must be included, even when not present in official metadata.
- Special versions
- (10th anniversary)
- (Special ver.)
- (English ver.)
- Use of parentheses should follow the official metadata.
- Content of these tags should be matched to official metadata, and does not have to be modified to match the examples.
- Completed sub-name examples
- feat. Nanahira (Camellia Remix) (Short Edit)
- (P*Light Remix)
- (Nanahira Cover) (Long Edit)
- The map's song author name must be the name of the original author(s) from the official metadata, including correct capitalization.
- The song name field must not include anything described in R11E.
Examples
| Correct |
Incorrect |
| Camellia |
camellia |
| Hiiragi Magnetite |
Hiiragi Magnetite feat. Kasane Teto |
| KAF |
花譜 |
| DECO*27 |
Ado cover |
¶ G. The map must list the correct mapper(s) and lighter(s)
- The map's mapper field must include the names of all the mappers and lighters OR the name of a mapper group which includes all the mappers and lighters who contributed to the mapset.
- If the mapper's name is not searchable (does not use Latin characters), use a commonly known translation or romanization.
- If not all mapper/lighter names fit, use "Various Mappers" or reasonably shorten the name of each contributor instead.
- Map difficulty names cannot overlap with each other in-game.
- If there is only 1 difficulty in the same game mode, the difficulty name may only take up 1 line.
- If there are 2 difficulties in the same game mode, the difficulty names may take up to 2 lines.
- If there are 3 or more difficulties in the same game mode, the difficulty names may take up to 3 lines.
- The difficulties must be ordered based on increasing star difficulty, with an allowed leniency of up to 0.5 stars.
- The map's description.
- The map's cover art or difficulty names.
- The map itself through the use of any objects, including bookmarks, bombs, walls, lighting events, or notes.
- Slurs in officially published songs are allowed only in the song itself. Slurs are not allowed when deemed hateful.
- Hate speech and/or illegal content of any kind, even when official, are not allowed to be ranked.
- The map may not break the TOS of the map hosting service used.
- Fully AI-generated songs will not be rankable. This includes songs generated with careful or repeated prompting to achieve a desired result. This also includes human-edited versions of AI-generated songs, as long as the AI-generated content comprises the majority of the content in the song.
- Human made songs that used AI-generated content or other forms of AI in the production process do not fall under this restriction, as long as the AI-generated content does not comprise the majority of the content in the song.