12th Official Tournament: Round 4

We’re almost at the halfway point of this tournament, and the competitors in the division are finally starting to shape up as the difficulty of charts continues to increase.

	D1: Forgotten Story D1 gets a sharp ramp up in difficulty as we transition towards our top 16; congratulations to all remaining competitors for gaining the Fractured Sunshine token (though it might be a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle too hard for you guys for now)! 25% of the remaining field will be cut for the lowest performances on Lunatic Sounds’ Forgotten Story, charted by Elekton. With respect to Division 1, this is actually a very technical chart – there are numerous high-speed 8th note streams, embedded 16th notes (those yellows are a bit fast, no?), and ample instances of heavy layering with triples and doubles that are mixed with other tiny blips.
	D2: Dirty Sevendust brings FFR a fantastic rock song charted by DarkZtar, to cut to our top 15, with the bubble of the group rounding out the top 16 token recipients; that’s right – there’s reason to fight even if you think you can’t get out of the yellow, as the top performing eliminated player this round will also receive the elusive Fractured Sunshine token. Dirty pushes D2′s required speed up a fair bit, forcing them to contend with not only large amounts of layered 16th streams, but numerous sprints of unlayered 24th note streams that come out to above 13 notes per second. They also get the second longest song of this round, as well. Gotta move fast.
	D3: Steel River This song is strange on many fronts. Compared to the traditionally energetic pieces produced by Colorful Sounds Port, Steel River is quite relaxed and not overly peppy or aggressive. To add to the identity confusion, this bmah chart definitely plays differently than numerous others in game with overall structure to the song. That being said, it still follows the bmah tradition of hitting hard somewhere – the meat of this chart comes with 160 BPM 16th note equivalent layered jumpstream that demands respectable one-handed balance and jumpstream control.
	D4: Amnolys When looking for the traditional, high-impact bmah we know and love, this is likely the more reminiscent route. Poised to be used in the previous official but barely missing the cut due to some chart shifting, onoken’s Amnolys makes a special appearance in this year’s roster, bringing D4 that familiar bmah-esque technicality. D4′s starting to get introduced to some really complicated structures, as this marks their first interaction with unrelenting mixing of incongruent rhythmic structures (our lovely polyrhythms, or Ampolys as it has been lovingly referred to as). D4 also gets to deal with pretty difficult patterns as well. Survive this round, and a top 16 position will be secured with your first prize of the tournament!
	D5: Area A (Shatterhand) Our favorite improvisational soloist comes to wreak havoc on our Division 5 players. MarioNintendo provides an excellent chart for a beautiful Shnabubula track whose musical structure is undeniably diverse. Unsurprisingly, MarioNintendo‘s proficiency as a simfile artist allowed him to run absolutely wild with unpredictability, as this chart is put together to keep players on their toes from start to finish, demanding focus for just shy of 3 and a half minutes. A far cry from the awkwardly structured Start Over, Area A throws just about everything it can in a way that feels surprisingly smooth… if you can do it.
	D6: Sayonara Cosmonaut AAAA (pun absolutely intended). Say hello to FFR’s newest Simfile Artist – TheToaphster! You most definitely would not think this is his first (and well technically, he’s got a pretty established presence on another popular rhythm game, ayoooo), but hot damn, glad it is. This glorious collaboration between AAAA and Umeboshi Chazuke brings over 2 and a half minutes of chiptune-like goodness that requires substantial finesse, control and speed in a good majority of skillsets to be successful. Also comes with an absolutely delectable solo.
	D7: Verse IV DarkZtar has found a way to assault a good majority of the competitors in this tournament, leaving only D4 yet to face his wrath as of this point in the tournament. Division 7 gets a lovely thrashing from DarkZtar through a likely familiar song to our osu!mania competitors (and any Sound Voltex players): Zographos’ Verse IV. Yet another song that inspires absolute chaos for Division 7, this one takes a much more forceful approach through consistent barrages of speed, including a reasonably extended 24th note stream that pushes the boundary of over 21 notes per second with 0 layering used to pad that number upward. With a myriad of very uncomfortable patterns and brutal transitions into and out of sections, players are going to have an exceptionally difficult time keeping their scores clean – and an even harder time maximizing them.
	D8: That’s Gonna Be …this chart. Woo boy. So… yeah. Terminal 11′s That’s Gonna Be, charted by Shxfted – is an experience. This chart absolutely shatters playability conventions for D8 by removing the traditional physical requirement and instead replacing it with a speed requirement not usually seen. Some of the bursts in this song are so fast, FFR simply has no idea what the hell to do. FFR’s engine likely was not programmed with the thought of intermittent 510 BPM 16th note bursts (you heard that right) and absolute explosions of every possible note color in numerous bursts, but here we are. The saving grace of this chart is that the patterns are easy to perform… though the subjectivity of that term must be taken into account given the speed and overall difficulty of pattern transitioning. When the file’s not dealing with unfathomably fast rainbow-colored walls, there are some extended sequences of 16th note jacks at 170 BPM and some 32nd bursts/streams requiring solid control of unorthodox patterning. In addition to the tournament files that were released for the round, three new bonus files have been added to the game as well – totalling the number of releases to 11. That Distant Shore Musician: Video Game Remixes ft. Slyleaf Step Artist: rushyrulz Song Genre: Arcade Difficulty: 27 Song Length: 2:31 hehenonomohe Musician: LOLI RIPE Step Artist: floatiestring Song Genre: Misc Difficulty: 26 Song Length: 0:51 Blue Army V2 Musician: DJ Sharpnel Step Artist: DarkZtar Song Genre: Purchased [5,000] Difficulty: 87 Song Length: 3:11

Good luck, everyone!

- psychoangel691 & TC_Halogen

Bonus File Release!

Hey everyone! As you can imagine we receive a lot of files in the process of putting an official tournament together. Unfortunately, not all of them can make it in for any number of reasons such as the difficulty just doesn’t fit in, or we have many around the same difficulty. I wish we could use them all because there are so many great files, but alas, we cannot. I asked Dossar if it would be okay to do bonus releases during this tournament and he agreed! So over the next few weeks, you’ll be receiving bonus files on top of your tournament releases!
Here’s your first set:

Boy & Bear
Musician: Pogo
Step Artist: Psychotik
Song Genre: Misc
Difficulty: 26
Song Length: 1:59

Snake Devil [Oni]
Musician: Scary Kids Scaring Kids
Step Artist: Ghost_Medley
Song Genre: Rock
Difficulty: 56
Song Length: 3:32

ephemera
Musician: ABE3
Step Artist: hi19hi19
Song Genre: Dance 2
Difficulty: 95
Song Length: 1:32

Enjoy!

psychoangel691

12th Official Tournament: Round 3

Round 3 already? Time is flying. This round features not only a bunch of good songs for play, but also features content from generally unfamiliar users – with 6 of the 8 charts coming from people who prior to this release, have 1 or no files in game!

D1: Pikachu’s Lament [Red]
Congratulations to gold stinger for getting their first FFR chart in game! The Living Tombstone’s Pikachu’s Lament [Red] introduces D1 to their first taste of more complicated structures, featuring some slower 16th notes intertwined with layering, complex rhythms and even a color inversion that introduces larger amounts of unfamiliar visuals. On top of it all, they contend with this battle for just a shade under 3 minutes. Song pops pretty good.

D2: Marble Mountain
D2 also gets a pretty poppin’ song – this one composed by Flashygoodness, an artist whose last appearance on FFR was over 5 years ago. Ghost_Medley joins the ranks of R1 Simfile Author with Marble Mountain, a fairly technical chart with ample streaming, blips of flams and some shorter jumpstreams.

D3: Old Skool
For our first scheduled break from the newbies (<3), Televisor’s second song in FFR comes courtesy of bmah … who coincidentally also introduced FFR to Televisor in the first place. Anyway, Old Skool takes the song tempo down a bit, but replaces the chart with noticeably heavier layering that requires ability to stay steady through slow but fairly dense 16th note jumpstreams (and handstreams).

D4: EBONY & IVORY [Standard]
Ghost_Medley‘s introduction to the 12th Official Tournament and well – FFR in general, doesn’t stop with Marble Mountain. D4 players get to contend with a familiar face around these rhythm gaming parts, OSTER Project. EBONY & IVORY [Standard] is a surprisingly technical chart that offers numerous opportunities to make a mistake, between regular streaming, jumpstreaming, colored trilling (with and without percussion cues), anchors, and a taste of some 24th streams — and at a much higher tempo than rainy beauty [Heavy].

D5: Start Over
Who would have thought that the first appearance for Terminal 11 was going to be in D5? That’s the reality we’re living in right now. Excelling D5 players should hopefully have their hands tied with a chart by up-and-coming simfile artist Pizza69, who only had one song in-game prior to this point. Start Over is the second longest file for this round with a duration of 3:08, and it packs quite a punch: more than 1000 of the notes come in the last 50% of the song. Start Over aims to target D5′s technical consistency by tossing them some fairly uncomfortable jumpstreams, transitions, mini-jack collisions and a few nasty bursts.

D6: Eternal Peace Is Nothing But An Illusion
DarkZtar makes their 6th appearance in the 12th FFR Official Tournament with Eternal Peace Is Nothing But An Illusion, by YZYX. While this chart features a touch less in the way of overall song tempo compared to the previous round, it makes up for requiring higher speed capabilities in streaming and an exceptional level of control to handle the final 400 notes, involving some heavy high-speed trilling, layering, bursts – the whole nine.

D7: LOSHAXI
Welcome back, Elekton! Thank you so very much for sending this thing of beauty to be unleashed on tournament competitors. D7 gets to face off against BMS artist Se-U-Ra’s LOSHAXI. This chart is exceptional and quite self-describing: this song embodies the meaning of chaos and the chart absolutely reflects that. Players will be pitted against extremely uncomfortable, pitch-relevant patterning between chords, jacks, jumpstreams, colored bursts, jumpstreams, etc. The only consolation that D7 players have to having to tame this kind of beast is that the song duration is quite short – at 1:34, this is actually the shortest song of the round. In those 94 seconds, it racks up 1337 notes even with short breaks.

D8: Gamma Stop Sending Me High Quality Rips
The frequency of which new content creators get charts of exceptionally high difficulty into the game early on in their charting “careers” is exceptionally low. Ghost_Medley makes a THIRD appearance in this round, and boy is it a crazy one. Just when we thought Kurorak’s mashcore songs couldn’t possibly breach higher in difficulty, FFR receives yet another installment in the series: Gamma Stop Sending Me High Quality Rips. Running for the majority of the song at 270 BPM, players will have to simply brute-force their way through nearly 4 minutes of unrelenting structure. Somewhere along the way, a sprinkle of Powerflux (at almost 1.1x rate) joins the party as well.

Good luck, everyone!

- psychoangel691 & TC_Halogen

12th Official Tournament: Round 2

Hello again! A new week, a new round. For those of you who are not one of the at least 67 people being eliminated from the gauntlet – congratulations! You made it (perhaps by the skin of your teeth) and are one week closer to prizes, and perhaps a division championship. Without further ado, let’s get right to the round 2 songs.

D1: Red Tint
Round 2′s chart for D1, Red Tint, enters the game as the new lowest difficulty offering for a song by popular artist S.S.H. – while operating at a lower tempo than the previous round, DarkZtar gives our players a bit more in the way of pattern variation and introduces some extended 24th streaming to push D1 a bit on the speed front. (I’m actually interested if some of the melodies in this song remind anyone of a particular game. Drop some comments on the FPP – I’m legitimately curious, since it reminded our entire household here.)

D2: Mindreader
Oh yes, it’s time for some meaty dubstep, coming from the mega-talented Virtual Riot, whose music has some how only made three appearances before today on FFR. DarkZtar scores yet another chart into the tournament roster with Mindreader, a fairly (by D2 standards) technical chart that has some relatively tricky patterning and opens up with some sustained near-10 note-per-second stream, before mixing things up with some layered 16th sprints and rhythmic mixups.

D3: Starchaser
The EDM ride continues! Psychotik makes their first mark both in this tournament and on FFR with Coyote Kisses’ Starchaser, and D3 will get a bit of a push in terms of overall difficulty. Not only can players expect some reasonable density in patterns, but some of these patterns occasionally have some quick repeated taps falling into and out of doubles/jumps.

D4: rainy beauty [Heavy]
Veteran stepartist bmah makes their first of two appearances in this round with D4′s rainy beauty [Heavy]. The joviality of the song is counteracted by a fairly aggressive chart featuring dense low-speed jumpstreams, layered 24th note scales, numerous mini-jacks and overall difficult patterning that promises to give even the stronger D4 players a challenge.

D5: AVALON
Impressive round 1, D5. Too good in fact. Enter AVALON by SASAKURATION, bmah‘s second file for this round. AVALON isn’t quite as technical as the other bmah chart in this round – however, it demands one-handed control and jumpstream ability a bit more than expected, all culminating in an unbroken 16th note jumpstream that goes on for a respectable amount of time.

D6: Lamuscore
D6 dips their toes into some high speed content having to fight against PrawnSkunk and his chart for Mekuso’s Lamuscore. This 240 BPM breakcore song carries a good mix of tricky patterning between some fairly aggressive jump usage combined with 16th bursts while pushing players around with sections of unbroken streams, short 32nd bursts, and a variety of flams to force players to be attentive and focused to not trash their score.

D7: October (Dark Autumn Remix)
To the poor, poor souls who thought that once they got rid of Xandertrax’s old chart for October from their radar, it would never resurface again: it’s back and it wants to play once more with a shiny new soundscape. October (Dark Autumn Remix) is a remix both composed and charted by TC_Halogen that takes musical and chart structures as inspiration from the original counterpart released more than a decade ago. D7 players will face substantial amounts of mindblockable 32nd note bursts, added mini-jacks, heavier layering, more difficult transitions, and an entirely unique breakcore soli that brings a fresh technical perspective that doesn’t exist in the original.

D8: Nest Wanderflux
The chiptune breakcore has not left D8, showcasing resident musician and elite keysmasher Aquellex‘s’ prowess of LSDJ with their mashup of Powerflux and Wanderlust. Their creation, Wanderflux, turns the intensity up to 15 out of 10 with a song whose tempo basically sits on the top-end boundary of possibility with their tool of choice – running at a blistering 255 BPM, the song is loaded with huge rushes of kicks, high speed chip melodies and numerous noise effects that aid to produce a TC_Halogen chart that is brutally difficult, as expected with this newly created division.

Good luck, everyone!

- psychoangel691 & TC_Halogen

It Begins! 12th Official Tournament: Round 1

AHHHHHHH! Can you believe it?! It’s finally here!

Round 1 of the 12th Official FFR Tournament is under way after such a long wait. Many shoutouts and thanks to everyone for being patient as well as thanks to those helping to put this all together.

First thing’s first, an announcement about the big change for this year. An 8th division has been added to the tournament. With such monumental achievements happening across FFR, the time just feels right. For this tournament, we were a bit more selective of who was bumped due to the quick shift. However, in coming tournaments, the general line will be at 100+ skill ranking. We’re super excited to see how the addition of this 8th division will affect the tournament and how intense the competition will be amidst our top players.

On another note, all files will be entered into game rated as 0 for the duration of the round. Those of you who have participated in previous FFR Official tournaments will be used to this. For anyone new here that isn’t aware, we have come to find that people tend to get too caught up in the ratings in previous tournaments and feel this really helps keep the tournament fun and it’s even been found to calm some people’s nerves not knowing how difficult the file really is.

With all of that out of the way, let’s move onto the songs for round 1!

D1: Misbehave (In This Cave)
Stepped by our resident community manager devonin, Misbehave (In This Cave) is a funky song by Ryan Ike whose chart places an emphasis on banjo melodies of varying speeds and rhythms. While fairly short at 1:47 and mostly tame in structure, D1 players will be tested in their ability to control short sprints of 16th notes at a respectable speed.

D2: The Hop
The Hop by OR-IF-IS adds to the list of shorter songs in the opening round of this tournament. rayword45’s choice of following 64th-note swing percussion makes D2’s bouncy opener rhythmically challenging for players of this level. Thankfully, the patterns are generally forgiving and the short length gives players ample time to put a large amount of attempts into the more difficult parts of this file.

D3: Machines
As someone who admittedly lacks a fondness of FFR’s rock genre as a whole, DarkZtar brings an absolute positive standout in Machines, by Crown the Empire. At a shade over 2 and a half minutes, this chart gives D3 a run for their money with 16th note streams that are constantly intermingled with layering and not-so-simple patterning. It is an excellent song and chart that I legitimately hope the competitors enjoy as much as I do.

D4: Bang
“IT’S ALL BANG BANG BLOODY BANG!” D4 most certainly gets the shaft on length here, opening up with a filthy, near 4-minute dubstep song – Bang by Droptek. Multiplayer moderator and growing simfile artist presence Deamerai unleashes a monster on the D4 competitors that demands precision in burst control, mini-jacks and solid mental fortitude.

D5: Carnation
Ah, my division where I shall die a very swift death. Carnation by aaaa (an appropriate artist name), is Elekton’s first file to FFR and it is a great one. Clocking in at 2:32, it is a lovely melodic piano song that features a great variety of jumpstream (ew #madcuzbad), mini-jack patterning and really nice appearance in general. Don’t let my bias against jumpstream pull you away because this file actually is very well done and is the first of great Elekton content to come.

D6: Ambient Ooparts
With great songs comes great durations? Well, Ambient Ooparts is an awesome song by cosMo@Bousou-P that brings a similar fate to the D4 players with regards to length, punching in over 3 and a half minutes of keysmashing carefully crafted by DarkZtar. Nothing stands out as an advantageous skillset in this for a D6 player other than sheer focus and control, as intermittent blips of broken jumpstream get interrupted with a variety of bursts, mini-jacks, split-handed jumptrills, etc. Stay focused.

D7: Super Soaker
Chiptune. Hi19. Speed. Colors. Streams. Got it? Good.
Super Soaker revives from the dead after sitting in queue for a rather long period of time, returning with a vengeance to terrorize our elite keysmashers right out of the gate. hi19hi19 leverages Blitz Lunar’s high-speed melodies and complicated rhythms to create a chart that packs a punch in terms of pattern variation and speed, forcing even those who have substantial ability in stream to check their control.

D8: Violent Arcade
And finally, D8. The… unicorns?
The first ever D8 song in an official tournament with a mere 14 competitors jousting for position in hopes to secure high enough scores to qualify for the top 8 of a brand new structure not seen to FFR. These keysmashing titans will do battle on Violent Arcade, a menacing opening to what appears to be a violent division (pun intended). DarkZtar makes yet another appearance in this opening round, absolutely assaulting everyone in his way with Final Sketch & rgLed’s monstrous collaboration as his weapon of choice. This brutal chiptune breakcore song provides a lethal mix of patterns that will likely pose issues to anyone who even attempts it. And this is just the beginning.

Good luck, everyone!

- psychoangel691 & TC_Halogen

New Werewolf Game Signups Open

the sun fan is opening up signups for a Turbo Werewolf game. 12 hour day phases, 12 hour night phases, and 9 players, this will be a substantially faster and less complicated game than the last several making it a great game to come try out TWG for the first time. Signup thread is located here, and as always, if you’ve never played TWG before, reviewing the rules thread here, is definitely advised.

AAA Achieved on Reluctantly Accepting Temporary Overexhaustion (109) by Sillyfangirl

The second highest difficulty song on FFR, which had a previous top score from Ziltoid of 12-0-0-0, has been AAA’d live on stream, by Sillyfangirl.

You can watch the replay of this momentous accomplishment here.

Congratulations to Sillyfangirl, and we’ll look forward to the very top levels of D7 having one more serious competitor for the Official Tournament.

Check out the clip of the moment, and the aftermath here

New Werewolf Game Signups

A new Werewolf Game is taking signups in the thread here.

This is not a Junior Werewolf game, so if you’re new to TWG, you should consider waiting for a jTWG to open up.

For basics about the Werewolf Game, check out the TWG Rules Thread or the basic tl;dr rules for information about how it works.

12th Official Tournament

It’s time! Dust off those keyboards the 12th official tournament is here! It’s been a long time coming but the wait is over. Signups are open now, and the tournament is set to start August 9th at 11:59 PM Server Time. For all the details check out the thread here. To sign up click the image below.

See you on the dashboard!

~psychoangel691