Spontaneous Contest #96.3
Please charge your cameras. Because tonight, IT’S GOING DOWN!
7pm Central Time.. (8pm Eastern and 5pm Pacific).
The prize, a t-shirt with a special message.
Cheers,
Synthlight
*Edit Synthlight 6:00pm CST* – Only about an hour away until we begin. 
New FFR Feature – Song Auto-Fail (we are serious) FFR Revision Update V.701
Many of you might be wondering why you would ever want to auto-fail anything on FFR right? Well, there is definitely a reason and I will explain that to you.
Lets say you have been trying to get a perfect score on a certain song for weeks now only to find out after playing the entire song, you had 500 perfects and 1 good at the end. Somehow in the middle of the song a good sneaks in there and ruins all the dreams and accomplishments. You then spend another 1-2 minutes playing out the song only to be made aware of that 1 good at the post game screen.
The horror!
So this is where auto-fail comes in. It will help you raise your ranking and stats quicker than before and will help you not waste your time on the parts you don’t need to improve on. It basically works like this..
Load the game
Click the settings button
Choose the trigger amount for each type of arrow judge down beneath “Auto-Fail”
Play a level!
Easy? Of course. I really hopes this helps many of you improve your game. Thanks to all of those who requested it and the subscribers on the beta team who helped test it. They provided a lot of great feedback.
The Feature is available now.
Cheers,
Synthlight
FFR Connection Speed Upgrade + New Feature Releases This Week
Well, not many of you thought we could get faster than dual gigabit up/down stream lines right? And while we didn’t actually upgrade our line speed, we had one serious datacenter core router upgrade that can more efficiently handle the flow of network traffic. This trickles down as higher speed and more responsiveness for the people that use FFR and will be noticed in page refreshes, multiplayer, file downloads and even FFR the game itself.
Yes, as many of you already know within a quarter second of visiting FFR tonight, the core router at the data center was finally replaced and we are off and running again. If everyone could do me a personal favor and spread the word (email, phone, word of mouth, person in class next to you) and let them know that FFR is finally back up to speed after 2 agonizing days of reduced bandwidth. Not only are we back, we are back and faster than hell. I was downloading files here from the site tonight and I kept maxing my cable connection out at around 550-600kbs. Has anyone had faster?
Last but not least we have a few new things to release to everyone this week in celebration of our upgrades. Check the news here throughout the day. I am sure that I will have more than a couple of things to post about. Muahaha.
Cheers,
Synthlight
YAY! HAPPY FUN TIMES!
Yes, that can only mean one thing. It means that the core router will be fixed tonight in approximately 50 minutes so that our transfer speeds go back to normal. Between now and 10pm central time, FFR will be going down for approximately 20 minutes. When it goes down, it will be rewired to the new core router and we will come back online being faster than ever.
See you on the side.
Cheers,
Synthlight
DataCenter Update
Yay! Only one more day to go until that core router gets updated at the datacenter in the Chicago Board of Trade building. While we still maintain connectivity, access speeds are slow until that core router is replaced and we get back onto our full Dual Gigabit Up/Down stream connections. Make sure when playing the game that you let the game and the lower multiplayer module fully load to avoid any issues.
This has given me some time to cook up a couple extra new features for the current release of FFR that will be released this week.
Cheers,
Synthlight + Need for Speed
*Edit March 20th Synthlight* – Only about 6 hours to go until we are back to full speed! I can’t wait.
Songs of the Week, 3rd week of March
SotW #1 of this week is Video Out A.
Song is by Vospi and Steps are by hi19hi19, both artists are the same with That is Fair.
It’s a semi-speedy song (178 BPM) and the rhythms are quite unique.
A fairly hard song, difficulty rating is 4.5/6 (Challenging).
You can find this song in Misc section.
SotW #2 is Sepia. Song is by Shiki, one of the most trendy FFR song artists.
Steps are by BzT, a new FFR stepfile artist.
This song is basically moderate, but has some tricky 24ths sections.
Difficulty rating is high 4/6 (Very Difficult).
This song is currently in Funk section.
Have fun with SotW.
Datacenter Maintenance
One of the core routers at the Datacenter we use inside the Chicago Board of Trade building went up in smoke today. While they work over the weekend to replace it and get everything back up to speed, you may notice slowdowns or interruptions in downloads. They have assured us that this situation will be taken care of as soon as possible.
Until then, lets pass the time with brainstorming Spontaneous contest ideas. Respond with your ideas and early this week, we will pick one of the ideas to actually use in a contest.
Cheers,
Synthlight
Seamus O’Toole… I’m Ready To Get Drunk!
And why is that, you might ask? Well, for one thing, it’s ST PATRICK’S DAY! For another, any holiday is an excellent excuse to release a simfile. So without further ado, I bring you Pretty Green Onions by DJ Sharpnel (and as always, Sharpnel’s site is NSFW). The file is pretty difficult and quite long. 1608 steps in 3:28 at 193bpm makes this file a Very Challenging (10/12 on the scale). You can find it in the upper left corner of Misc Page 1 for the time being, with it later being moved to its proper spot within Misc.
Little bit of a story behind this file. It all started by pokelda informing me that he was stepping PGO with all 64th arrows (64th arrows are green, for those unaware) as a tribute for St. Pat’s. I thought this had potential, but I needed to see the finished project still. Unfortunately, when Shash and I got down to playing it, it was very very difficult to read. So we were heartbroken, but had to turn down the file. BUT… it turns out that another one of our up-and-coming stepfile authors, Cyanite, had a similar idea, sans the green arrows. So we took his file, which was only finished 2 weeks ago, and threw it to the head of the queue, just in time for today.
So with all of that, ENJOY Pretty Green Onions. And if you’re of legal age to drink, have a beer with me on this most joyous of holidays.
-Tasselfoot & a pint of ale
Lots of Changes in the FFR LevelRank Page
Lightdarkness was nice enough to go through and make a bunch of changes in the levelrank page. He uploaded his changes this morning.
If you have never been in to check your level rank, you really should. And if you have already seen level rank, you should take a look at it with a new eye and see the new features.
Thanks again to Lightdarkness for the new additions.
Cheers,
