Chitter Chatter

For those interested, the new chat is up and running. You can get to it from the link on the top navigation or on the left navigation. I will try to stick around in chat for most of the day to see what kind of interest we can brew up.

The new chat is irc based and a bunch easier to read/operate. If you use a program like mirc you can join us on server irc.zoite.net in #flashflashrevolution otherwise you can join via a browser by clicking on the buttons I had mentioned.

See ya in chat!

Cheers,

Synthlight

Can’t wait until I have my own computer….

My god, I am going to bitchslap my parents. This is the second time they’ve deleted a file crucial to my Internet browser and I’ve had to reformat. However, after reformating, my WIndows 98: 2nd Edition disk (-_-) crapped out on us, so we’ve been computerless for the past week. I was smart enough to back up my necessary files so I still have the files, but work on them has temporarily ceased. I’m going to pass the stuff along to Synth as soon as I can so he can piece the rest together. Until then, I’ll have to continue my Internet vacation until my dad gets the computer back.

PostProduction.Com Webhosting Deal

As most of you know, I run a
webhosting company that supports FFR with it’s profits to cover the massive transfer bandwidth
usage of the game. I have decided to run a special for the next 3 days only
for people who visit FFR. On Sunday June 15, the deal is gone. Once you signup, you are locked into the low price for
the life of your account.

Here is the deal.. You will not find a better deal at our level of expertise and speed.

* $5.00 per month

* 7GB TRANSFER PER MONTH!
* 300mb Disk Space!
* Free Domain Registration and Setup if Needed!

* Full Featured Control Panel
* Weekly Remote Site and Database Backup
* Unlimited Subdomains
* Unlimited FTP/Email Users
* PhP 4.31/Perl/Java/CGI
* PhP Accelerator mod
* Pop3/Smtp/Webmail
* MYSQL 3.23.56 Database
* PhpMyAdmin 2.50 MySQL Management
* Urchin4 Webstats
* Frontpage Extensions
* Served on Linux Redhat with Apache
* No Lengthy Contracts
* IM and Ticket Based Tech Support

When you signup up you MUST enter the FFR promotional code or else you will not
get the special deal. Payment is through credit card with the safety of SSL. If
you need to pay through PayPal or other means you need to contact us before you
signup. All profits (and we mean ALL!) go towards maintaining the FFR server and future FFR development. FFR has always been free and that will never change.

The code is: FLASHFLASHMYPANTS

The URL is:
http://www.postproduction.com Just signup for the simple account and enter the code during signup.
 

Read All About it!

As most of you have probably seen from the menu on the left, we are putting together a monthly newsletter that will showcase current FFR news (and rumors! lol) as well as DDR news and events. We are in the process of organizing it’s layout and we are still looking for people willing to contribute articles. The first newsletter should be out within a month.

PM Synthlight if you would like to help with the newsletter. Thanks to everyone who has signed up to receive it in just these last couple days (link to the left).

Cheers,

Synthlight

Good Golly .51 Beta Already?

I will give a more extensive explanation in the morning. Just wanted everyone to know that we have released .51 beta tonight. A few significant changes.

1.) the entire hi-score system has been rewritten. The old code was completely scrapped. The new system is completely database driven and (I know you guys have wanted this for a long time) Usernames are only allowed ONCE per song. If you beat your own hi-score, it will just move your name up in the list. I would also like to note that there is no longer the ability to type in your name. Your username is entered automatically if you have a login name at FlashFlashRevolution.com. It uses this information to store your game preferences etc. It currently isnt recording Perfect/Good/Average/Miss and combo stats for these hi-scores but it will in the VERY near future.

2.) I added a small stat in the score screen. Nothing super important but it just shows you how you rank compared to other players of that level with a percentage indicator. I will elaborate this idea in the future.

Please feel free to test it for bugs and let me know what you think. We are always looking to improve on the code.

Don’t forget to clear cache and reload!

Slowly but surely

Well, my first philosophy class was tonight and my promotion is in full effect at work. Add on to that my planning for the big event this Saturday, my girlfriend and I are buying items and coming up with how we are going to arrange and decorate the rooms for the apartment we will be moving into in the near future, working extra to put away some money, hanging out with some friends I haven’t seen in a while and checking out some new games I bought recently, and I’ve been pretty busy.
Contrary to belief, I do not get paid for what I do here. I work strictly on my free time and I’m getting things along as much as I can, but sometimes I have to take care of personal issues, so please have patience.
*UPDATED*
The secret project #2 is now 70% complete. I HOPE (notice hope) to have the project completed by the end of next week, maybe sooner. At this rate, however, it is possible I will have it completed by the end of this week. If I can get a hold of Synthlight no problem when I finish it, there is a very good chance it will be done before this weekend. However, with my event this Saturday, I will not be too available, if at all. I will see how everything unfolds.
************
Also, for those working on secret project #3, I talked to Synth and he said he would set up a way for you to get the songs sometime soon.
Thanks for having patience with us and enjoy the new .50 features.

Wow! It is Query Time

For the past week we have been struggling to figure out why the database queries have been taking so long to execute for this site. Well.. We finally found our culprit. We have been logging referer info and have failed to limit it.. What this means in short is that everytime you loaded a page, it had to search atleast 500,000 records in the database. Needless to say, this slowed things down quite a bit and we sometimes had to lock people out of the site.

You should notice a HUGE increase in access time on this site from this point on. Sorry to slow everyone down for the past few weeks. We are back to normal now.

*EDIT*.. even faster now.. Added certain indexes into the database to speed up search requests.. On a mission to optimize.

Time For a Little Change .50 beta

Well.. I officially released Beta .50 tonight. I figured it was time to change a few things.

1. I changed the way the score screen looks by just a little bit. I have started pulling in more database elements. For example there is a score that shows your previous best and the best score on FFR. *NOTE* the FFR highscore is based on the database and not the old score text files. So 2 may differ.

2. I updated the background of the game. Nothing exciting and I may go back to the old one but just needed something different to look at. The orange and yellow was burning my eyes.

3. Added characters that you can choose from. These characters will also become icons in the new database based highscore list that will be available in the next beta update. They will also be represented on the actual game screen in the future. For now they are more of a novelty than anything else. All these characters came from BladerJayne. A few of you may remember her from the old forums. She has been generous enough to contribute original artwork for FFR and R2. (thanks again!).

4. Announcer GONE.. maybe not for good.. but for now as per the request of millions of people.

*NOTE* i noticed that the characters are not sticking and FFR doesnt remember which one you picked when you come back to ffr. I will work on fixing that tomorrow. It is almost 5am and I have been working on this stuff sooo much today.

And now for something completely out of the ordinary. I promised Arch0wl that I would mention his Kings of Chaos game and that I would provide a link for it. After this, I don’t want to see anymore KOC whoring around the forums.

http://www.kingsofchaos.com/page.php?id=259538

Arch0wl also wants you to know: “After signing up(same entrys as you would fill out to sign up for a message board/forum) at the link previously shown, you will have a link which you can send to friends and such, to increase your army size as well.”

Submitting Songs

Seems Synth hasn’t made an announcement on this yet, so I needed to let you people know…

Well remember how we heard about the “Excluded” info? How your songs can go on FFR? Well here’s how you should do it. Once you’ve got your song nicely recorded as an MP3, head over to the forums. Scroll to the bottom and go into the song submission. You can upload your songs here and only the admins will be able to download ‘em. Of course, doing this gives FFR the full rights to use them but you also retain the rights to your own song. Also… you can go to .dwi submission and submit your stepfiles for a song, but you must have the rights to use the song in the first place before you submit them! Well hopefully we’ve got some potentional bands here, give it a shot guys. Here’s your big chance for a claim to fame!