Man, it's approaching 2 weeks since I last played! Time is lacking though at the moment. Just moved to London due to getting a job at SEGA! I will be back soon, just getting used to being back at work, and getting myself sorted at my new location ^_^

Phew, this was a close one! I've been logging on occasionally during the week to try our song, but like many others I'd been suffering crippling amounts of lag which led me unable to consistently get under 20g. I've been afraid that my lacklustre effort was going to leave heartbroken and out in the first round... Luckily, with only hours to go, I've logged on and the problem has sorted itself! 6 restarts later and it's a nice shiny AAA sitting on the dashboard :)

Anyways, like legions of others I've been excitedly awaiting this tournament since the end of the last one. Some of my favourite charts in the game (Fish Hell, Stay Crunchy) were released last tournament, and it was really exciting battling through Division 2 until I finally finished up 1 place away from getting into the top 16. I don't feel I've improved much since then, but I've moved up to Division 3 anyways which I think is fair. I'm a bit nervous as I know that I'm really outclassed here, but I'm going to use this to try and finally get over the hump that is jumpstream. Seriously, I can't hit even the most simple jumpstream. It sucks.

Tournament Aims:
Finish in the top 16 []
AAA at least 3 rounds []
AAA my first 50+ on spread []
Beat my rival pikakirby123 ;) []
Level up (learn to hit jumpstream) []

Round 1 | Infinity | AAA | Place 1/81

Thankfully this song is a nice easy first round warmup with no jumpstream. Having only just had a chance to really appreciate it properly thanks to lag, I've gotta say I really like it! I've always had a soft spot for songs that go to 12th and 24th rhythms (a lot of my favourite ITG charts have that), and this one is fun and bouncy. The jumps aren't spread too densely to be any kind of problem, and the run with the repeating triplet patterns was really fun, even if it did cause a few black flags :)

So with that AAA, I suppose I'll see you all next round!

\Most memorable part of Round 1 last year/
Although I was having trouble AAAing Keep on Driving (stupid white notes), I remember the plight of fellow D2er Eddieownz. With almost 1000 plays of that song by the end of round 1, I was more gutted for him not getting that AAA than I was for me.


Round 2 | CS Custom Gun Sounds | 2-0-0-0 | Place 24/63

AAA'd last round, so here we are at round 2. This weeks song is another one contructed from Counterstrike gun sounds. I didn't like the original song much (my girlfriend liked it even less as she had to put up with me trying to FC it!), and I disliked the chart even more! Thankfully this time Elite Ninja has given us a file that won't infuriate everyone like the original.

...Well, not as much. Damn I don't get on with this chart. A good friend of mine was in D3 last year and I swear the song he way playing this packed with jumps and hands. Although I've just about managed to SDG it so far (9 clean), I don't think that's gonna cut it come Sunday. What's even worse is that I'm really playing off form today so it looks like it'll be close for me this round.

That said, I'm kinda pumped up to try harder after looking at some of the scores that people I've considered 'rivals' during user tournaments have managed so far (TheSaxRunner05, popsicle_3000, pikakirby123, nois-or-e), most notably.

Watching 25thhour and Cold Kitten has been kind of scary too. Got them for top of the division!

*gets back to practising* Wish me luck!

\Most memorable part of Round 2 last year/
Not a great one this, it was my friend XTempestX getting knocked out this round. He was in D3 and certainly wasn't in the upper tier. Plus his PC lagged like a beast. Shame he isn't competing this time!

Edit: Haha, 25 retries and it went 6-0-0-0, 5-0-0-0, 3-0-0-1, then 2-0-0-0. I'll be happy with that :D


Round 3 | Baby Still Too Fat | 5-2-0-1 | Place 29/48
Woke up this morning, read the front page. One word jumped out and my heart sank. Jumpstream. Right, so basically that means I need to up my game, and it needs to happen this week. I have the time I suppose, but can I gain tha skillz?

Well, to see what I have to aim for I played the chart. Well, attempted too. Holy fuck that lag is back in force. Lowered the speed to 1.7 and could just about read it (apart from when the choppiness got really bad), but the combined input lag made it almost unplayable. The chart doesn't look as bad as I was hoping, but I don't think I can accurately get a measure on it under these conditions. I just hope it's fixed soon...

Also, RIP ohsosilly. Sad to see you didn't make the cut!

EDIT: Right, so the lag isn't going to be fixed, and I decided to move to the R^2 engine. Figured out a large part of the reason that I was so bad at it was that I didn't realise you have to use totally different speed mods. So from 1.8 to 2.3, and I'm back to usual! Yay!

Spent a LOT of time today playing that song and managed to creep into 32nd. I was there this time last year and was knocked out 3 hours before the end of the round so to hell with staying there. 29th a few tried latter, a bit happier! Still convinced Cold Kitten is going to appear and get a passing score and that will bump me down one, but I'm hoping I'll be through to the next round with this!

Also, I managed to get FFR working on my old training partners laptop. Now he's back in the game, I reckon I might stand a chance of improving >:3

I see a lot of people have posts like this full of goals to drive them. I figure that's not a bad thing at all, so here we go...

Goals:

[x] 10,000 Average Rank (Yay legacy songs -_-)
[x] 7,500 Average Rank (More legacy...)
[x] 5,000 Average Rank (That's enough legacy spamming)
[ ] 2,500 Average Rank
[ ] 1,000 Average Rank

[ ] 250 Regional Rank
[ ] 100 Regional Rank
[ ] 50 Regional Rank

[x] 100 Public AAAs (On Conquest and Capture! Finally!)
[x] 150 Public AAAs (Forgotten Planet, Go Rushjet1!)
[ ] 200 Public AAAs
[ ] 250 Public AAAs
[ ] 300 Public AAAs

[x] AAA a 45+ on spread (25/1/12 - We Will Fly!)
[ ] AAA a 50+ on spread
[ ] AAA Vertex Beta and Monstrous Turtles on index

[x] 300 Public FCs
[x] 400 Public FCs
[ ] 500 Public FCs
[ ] 600 Public FCs

[x] Veteran Status gets! (2/7/12 :D)

[x] 50 skill tokens
[ ] 75 skill tokens
[ ] 100 skill tokens
[ ] vRofl skill token

[ ] Win an official tournament
[x] Earn division 3 placement in an official tournament
[ ] Earn division 4 placement in an official tournament
[ ] Earn division 5 placement in an official tournament
[ ] Earn division 6 placement in an official tournament

[x] Win a user tournament (Tournament of Eternity May)

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/profile/YOSHl/

<3~

Breaking the Common being the 50th... Didn't even realise it was going to be my 50th otherwise I'd have picked a song I really liked. Oh well, I'll do that for 100!

...let's hope it doesn't take another 7.5 years :3