FFR: The New User Perspective And New FFR Ideas

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by TC_Halogen

"Let you know?" >__>;

It's good that you're thinking about it, but when you're doing something from scratch, it's hard to take anything seriously until there's at least some sort of actual schematic for both the design and/or the (flow of) programming. Anyone can conceive the idea of wanting to build an engine on a platform.

It's also worth asking if Unity is the best choice for something like this in the first place. This is something that experienced FFR developers and/or developers who do things for other reasons might be able to elaborate on.

An FFR Engine, programmatically, isn't card to break down. A new engine by concept isn't hard, at least for me. I could come up with a new schematic in a week if I needed to, though, university research must take priority. (Gotta pay bills.)

There are two hard parts are designing, and the use of software. I'm not very familiar with HTML 5. I've mainly worked in Java/ JavaFX, C++, and RPG Maker. I've worked a tiny bit when it comes to web development, but thankfully, my current research will be requiring that I program an entire browser extension, so I'm going to get a whole lot more experience. It may shed on more options. Who knows. Maybe I could make an FFR-based browser extension. :P

[HeZe]

I'm building a fiffer engine using lego bricks, gonna keep you updated

[Charu]

Make Spaghetti and use that to fiffer.

[Ohaider]

Originally Posted by SKG_Scintill

tl;dr

Originally Posted by SKG_Scintill

make ffr great aga- no

king shitpost

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by Charu

Make Spaghetti and use that to fiffer.

Don't forget the sauce.

[sickufully]

After reading every post, this is what I've gathered. Probably missed a few issues or suggestions but these seem to be the main points. I did this exact thing in the 'What's happening in here' thread which I personally think this thread kinda ties into. That post can be found here. Not all points in that post are relevant to this thread but a lot of them are similar or exactly what we are discussing here.

Summary of Issues
- New players not sticking around
- New players being bombarded with info
- New players not posting on forums
- New players posting questions to a redundant account (Synth's acc page)
- Suggestions being noticed but not acted upon
- Suggestions that are acted upon, are not significant
- Updates are frequent but are small and not adequate for reeling in new players
- Token system revamp (this is supposedly happening already)
- Restoring the userbase via emails (already touched on, not going to happen)
- FFR introduction removed (this)
- Permissions of songs
- No clear button that states where to 'Play FFR'
- Site layout very unappealing (has barely changed in over 5 years)
- Homepage is confusing (refer to above point)
- Navigation on forums is confusing
- Not enough staff to work on updates
- FFR on Kongregate and other small gaming sites
- Donations not being allowed
- Profit vs non-profit
- Pictionary for definitions (this is already a thing, but should be more accessible)
- Terminology needs to be better explained (but not forced down throats)
- MP is split up into its respective versions with a universal option for R^3 players only
- People's opinion on the Legacy genre
- Behind-closed-doors chats (not really a huge issue here)

Suggestions/Potential Fixes
- Encourage newcomers to sign-up. Give them a reason to want to play more
- Perks for referring friends
- Lag issues and remedies addressed in the FAQ (at the top of the page)
- Completely new and simplified homepage (just a complete rework)
- Personalised homepage (can move things around, hide/show things, make it how you want it)
- All mods accessible from all game versions (obviously some are impossible)
- Live chat server up 24/7. Pro-chat updated to voice chat maybe (push to chat)
- 'Become a Stepfile Artist' section of the forums (basically a guide on everything there is to know about producing stepfiles)
- Database structure changes (halogen touched on this in his post)
- Teasers for updates (screenshots, videos, chart previews, etc.)
- Legacy Genre removed
- Remove Legacy songs from the levelranks but keep them in game
- Add a banner or warning message to let users know that Legacy files are original but 'messy'
- FFR Welcome Page (suggested by Psychoangel here)
- Unlock harder song difficulties as you progress through the game
- Guides for specific areas of the site/game (for offset, rates, mods, TWG, etc.)
- Rework of genres (this is my own suggestion cause I feel the genres are far too broad)
- Stickied threads should be more accessible or displayed differently
- Tokens displayed in a grid layout with different ways to sort them
- Standalone version of FFR needs to be made aware of
- Logged out users (or guests) don't need to see half of the content that registered users see (s1rnight touches on this in his post)

I dunno how many of you actually looked at this (no one provided feedback) but I feel it's a good starting points for design improvements. Good explanation for each image as well.
Gundam-Dude's post about the site homepage

Also, I think s1rnight is onto some really good suggestions here. Most of these points seem like they would be beneficial to the site.
s1rnight's suggestions

Take what you will from this post, it's supposed to just be a neutral point-of-view summary of the thread but it would be good to see some responses on what is going to come from this discussion.

[rushyrulz]

Originally Posted by Xenorosth

This will take a LONG, time, but I'm looking into making an FFR Engine design in Unity. Currently, this is a solo thing, and it's an experiment to see what unity is capable of. If anyone wants to take this project seriously, let me know, but I can't guarantee anything for now.

lmao how pretentious can one man get?

If you worthless peons need help developing a Unity engine, lmk

Originally Posted by sickufully

- Token system revamp (this is supposedly happening already)

Nothing is "supposedly" happening, it's absolutely happening and the normal token revamp is being implemented sooner than you think.

We have actually been extremely transparent on this one, reaching out to the userbase twice for opinions.

Originally Posted by sickufully

- Standalone version of FFR needs to be made aware of

Not so much "made aware of" as "shove down people's throats"
>User plays in browser
>Message pops up
>Hey, can't help but notice you're playing in a browser, you may be interested in using a standalone flash player to help reduce lag issues. >>click link here<<
>End.

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by rushyrulz

lmao how pretentious can one man get?

If you worthless peons need help developing a Unity engine, lmk

No offense, but I think you're a exaggerating a bit. I'm doing it because it was an idea another developer gave me. But if you feel like viewing it like that I suppose I can't stop you.

[rushyrulz]

Your post was the very definition of pretentious. It's like saying, "guys I just started CS1300 web development in HTML, let me know if you need any pointers for redesigning the front page."

In order for a Unity engine to work for FFR, here is a list of things that would need to be addressed:

1) Make an interface that doesn't deter too much from the current look and feel of R^3. If people don't see what they're used to seeing, it will not be received well.
2) The game needs to be playable not only at the same level, but better than it currently is with all current playstyle settings still intact.
3) You need to find a way to convert Flash swfs to be playable by Unity (this is a project in and of itself), you could incorporate Unity into Flash, but we would be having the same flash versioning issues as always, so not really a solution.
4) You would probably need to publish a standalone version or subject players to a tedious process for installing Unity standalone plugins, also involving accessing browser caches to get appropriate files which needs to be repeated every time new content is added.
5)...
6)...
7)... <list of unforseen issues continues here>

To completely recode the engine on a different platform would be the largest project this site has ever seen. Everything from the timing windows to the way the arrows scroll to the levels themselves (and how we convert .sm files for import into FFR) is dependent on Flash right now.

I'd say even a seasoned Unity developer would be up for a serious challenge with this project.

While it's not an impending issue, and players are still able to obliterate 25+NPS files with near perfect precision, Flash is an acceptable platform to use since the infrastructure already exists.

And I most certainly do not want to see a StepMania clone implementation of FFR, however much that would wet some users' panties...

Sorry for rambling, but I get a bit perturbed when people start complaining about a platform transition not happening, because it takes soooo much work, more that can be accomplished by such a limited dev team we have.

[MinaciousGrace]

you know i feel like programming is the single occupation in which there is a pervasive obliviousness to the fact that all occupations have a distribution of skill/talent and that the vast majority of people in any occupation fall below the entirely unremarkable threshold

it's like everyone who figures out how to make a couple dozen lines of code do what they want is continuously waving their dicks around in everyone else's face about how they can do everything faster better smarter than anyone else

well it's less of a dick waving than like, sitting in the middle of times square with a number of giant neon signs pointing to how your dick is clearly better than anyone else's and if anyone'd like to take a look they can feel free to suck it

i don't know where i'm going with this but i guess my point is that you're all garbage and i could make a better game in 20 minutes if i wanted to bye

[Spenner]

Yo, having a floating menu or Quick Links kinda floating bar at the bottom of the site would be super easy and more user friendly for those in-and-out of playing the game and browsing the forum. Even a little popup for profile chat would be pretty cool and perhaps not the most difficult. Just something that came to mind I noticed felt pretty empty, was the bottom of my internet window.

[powerjoggeli]

Hello everyone. I feel like sharing my thoughts on this.

I'm someone who played this game all the time from around 2008 to 2012. I just remembered this game today and googled to see if something new happened here in the past 3-4 years. I'm not sure why exactly I stopped playing this game, but I think it was a combination of two things.

1) it just gets boring after a while.
2) Technical issues. Flash sucks massive dick.

Sometimes I feel like playing this game again. I open the web version and it just runs like crap. Then I'm like whatever and close the tab. I know there is a flash standalone thing but I don't want to download it. Too lazy & somehow it just doesn't feel right. It makes feel like I'm playing something abandoned.

In my opinion, what could give this game a serious boost is a solid desktop client (Unity or whatever) and Steam. Add some social stuff, achievements, leveling or some other type of progression system. Maybe some daily or weekly challenges to unlock some stuff. And whatever else all the modern games have these days. This game could get pretty big again.

But of course I understand that building a desktop client + getting it on Steam is a lot of work. And not many are willing to invest the time and work do that for free.

But I have no doubt that this would bring me back to this game.

[M0nkeyz]

the market for this game is just very niche, with all the new free-to-play games that are out nowadays, and the fact cheap modern pc's are much more powerful than they were during the golden FFR days. People just don't wanna invest alot of time into an old game. When they can play new cool looking games instead.

I introduced a friend to this game and he just didn't want to bother. The game is too much of a time investment and the endgame(high level songs) is just too much of a challenge to casually get to. The music in the game also doesn't appeal to everybody. And I guess most people just prefer to play moba's and shooters over rhythmgames nowadays.

[igotrhythm]

Originally Posted by powerjoggeli

Hello everyone. I feel like sharing my thoughts on this.

I'm someone who played this game all the time from around 2008 to 2012. I just remembered this game today and googled to see if something new happened here in the past 3-4 years. I'm not sure why exactly I stopped playing this game, but I think it was a combination of two things.

1) it just gets boring after a while.
2) Technical issues. Flash sucks massive dick.

Sometimes I feel like playing this game again. I open the web version and it just runs like crap. Then I'm like whatever and close the tab. I know there is a flash standalone thing but I don't want to download it. Too lazy & somehow it just doesn't feel right. It makes feel like I'm playing something abandoned.

In my opinion, what could give this game a serious boost is a solid desktop client (Unity or whatever) and Steam. Add some social stuff, achievements, leveling or some other type of progression system. Maybe some daily or weekly challenges to unlock some stuff. And whatever else all the modern games have these days. This game could get pretty big again.

But of course I understand that building a desktop client + getting it on Steam is a lot of work. And not many are willing to invest the time and work do that for free.

But I have no doubt that this would bring me back to this game.

A lot of the achievements and progression bars you talk about are already built into the game nowadays. Tokens == achievements, we have "friends" on profiles, and we have tier points as leveling/progression.

[Figlar20k]

Originally Posted by powerjoggeli

Hello everyone. I feel like sharing my thoughts on this.

I'm someone who played this game all the time from around 2008 to 2012. I just remembered this game today and googled to see if something new happened here in the past 3-4 years. I'm not sure why exactly I stopped playing this game, but I think it was a combination of two things.

1) it just gets boring after a while.
2) Technical issues. Flash sucks massive dick.

Sometimes I feel like playing this game again. I open the web version and it just runs like crap. Then I'm like whatever and close the tab. I know there is a flash standalone thing but I don't want to download it. Too lazy & somehow it just doesn't feel right. It makes feel like I'm playing something abandoned.

In my opinion, what could give this game a serious boost is a solid desktop client (Unity or whatever) and Steam. Add some social stuff, achievements, leveling or some other type of progression system. Maybe some daily or weekly challenges to unlock some stuff. And whatever else all the modern games have these days. This game could get pretty big again.

But of course I understand that building a desktop client + getting it on Steam is a lot of work. And not many are willing to invest the time and work do that for free.

But I have no doubt that this would bring me back to this game.

The flash standalone doesn't even work for people.

Yes I've been on the thread, downloaded the "standalone" flash players listed on the thread, and it keeps saying that I already have it downloaded in chrome which is utter BS because I can't use it standalone!!!

At least make it easy for people

[Rapta]

Originally Posted by Figlar20k

The flash standalone doesn't even work for people.

Yes I've been on the thread, downloaded the "standalone" flash players listed on the thread, and it keeps saying that I already have it downloaded in chrome which is utter BS because I can't use it standalone!!!

At least make it easy for people

i made this for the official youtube channel for ffr
maybe it can help you

Standalone Video

[Dinglesberry]

Don't worry boys, just wait until big Dingles develops his own custom FFR player.

It's actually gonna be a wrapper for the Flash 9 player to display relevant info at the same time as the game, but I got some #B1GPL4NZ - basically it stems from the fact that I play FFR with the ffr website minimized and always have certain tabs open - trying to create a solution where all the info you need stays open and is nicely laid out. Just messin about for fun.

I'm not very familiar with HTML 5. I've mainly worked in Java/ JavaFX, C++, and RPG Maker.

This is what lets me know you probably won't be able to lol... No one I know who actually knows how to do software development even thinks about what languages they "know" lol.. I've had classes where they randomly make us code in something like Ruby, never used it before, but its so trivial what language you use because the principles apply anyways... Lol the fact that you even mention Java and C++.. All good though brother good luck with your engine.