Halcyon, Off and Frozen

It just happened again, but with a different song.

I played "Halcyon" without any problems, then moved on to "Chrono Trigger" when it showed a black background, brought up the real background, then immediately ended the game. It showed everything at 0, except personal best and overall best. I reloaded the level, and had little problems (losing, of course). I went to "Love You Anymore", and the arrows were pretty much on cue. When the song ended, it froze.

In the first game, I had just finished playing (and losing at) Beethoven Virus. I'm guessing that it's the losing of one song and winning thereafter. Off to investigate.

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EDIT: My hypothesis is right. I played Molto Vivace and lost, and then played Super Mario 80's Remix (no lag) and beat it. Froze again.

I obviously can't tell if there are any lurking variables, but I'm sure there are a number of win-post-lose situations which may come up for other FFR players. This will be a serious problem if more people encounter it.

As far as the lag in my first situation and the bizarre Chrono Trigger bug, I'm guessing that they're either separate issues or just flukes? There's nothing outstanding about my song selection or my playing behavior. I have never encountered this problem before tonight, and I've done win-post-lose before (usually with the Beethoven Virus/Halcyon combo).

If anyone else wants to test this, be my guest. Half-play the first and win the second.

I'm back, this time with a different occurence.

I started playing "Halogen," and I waited a second or two for the arrows to show up. They never did. I let the whole song play through (no arrows), and it froze. I then played Beethoven Virus (lose), tried a now-working Halogen again (lose), then went back to Beethoven Virus to find it was off by a second (lost). I retried, and it was back in synch with the music (lost). I played Halcyon, which was off on its timing. It froze after I beat the song.

So, aside from proving that I suck at both Halogen and Beethoven Virus, it shows that this problem can happen on the very first game. I noted on the update that Synthlight took away some loops that were wasting CPU in the program. Could they have possibly messed up the timing or shut-down command on songs?

More as it develops. Also, I'm really curious if anyone else has had this problem. I haven't seen any other posts that apply.

Please don't post 3 times in a row.

Apologies for my lack of netiquette. I didn't know how exactly to handle such an onslaught of problems (and probably should have checked the FAQ more thoroughly). I thought I would only have to post about that one instance. Turns out this has become a huge issue. I'll edit on existing posts from now on.

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The good news is that I didn't have any freezes tonight. The bad news is I have an equally devastating problem: Early endings. I played 11 songs tonight, so I'll just make a list instead of the chummy discussion.

Massive: The music didn't play at all. I beat it okay, but I don't know if there were any timing issues.
Halcyon: Kicked me out one second after loading.
Snowman & Sunshine Girl: No problems. Beat it.
SkellyBones: It all went okay until the music started speeding up. I didn't even get to the off-beat arrows before it kicked me out.
Soul Shift: In addition to arrows being a second off-beat, the game kicked me out prematurely.
Legend of Zelda: No problems. Lost during the Yoshi portion.
Dendrite: I don't play this song often, but the ending was abrupt enough for me to declare this premature.
La Luna Caida: My first attempt was an instant kick-out. The second go went alright.
Funk in G: No problems here.

I've played this game since the days of circles and orange background. I have not had anything even CLOSE to these problems. The only two things I've done differently right before the trouble started was a Challenge (which I had never done before) and Multiplayer (Which I've played a few games in and have since left). I don't know how many people have played single-player since multi's been released, but I'm guessing the number is few. I'll post more as it comes up.

However, I'll do it in an edit to this post (except if someone posts after this).

Wow you sound like I used to sound when I first started posting here. XD

Lance: Usually issues like these are caused by the songs not downloading completely.

If the sound goes out or the song loads a black background and ends you need to delete your temp files and reload FFR. If you are behind a network prone to packet loss, this could cause you to have errors in downloading the songs.

I'm sorry. I attend other forums and they don't typically have a formal double-post rule. They said just make sure not to post utter crap. Since I had actual content, I thought it would be alright (and didn't want to cause unusual situations in time stamps or make a bunch of new threads for the same problem).

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I tried "Beethoven Virus" while logged out. Same off-beat problem, so it's possible that this doesn't have to do with my recent activities on challenge or multiplayer OR it's simply a problem on my system alone. The latter's looking more likely, but I still don't know. When I logged back in, I played "Halcyon" and got the freeze-out.

So I cleared the cache in my choice method - Disk Cleanup. After that, I did it in the FAQ method - Tools to Options to Clear Cache. I then went to "Halcyon". I noticed that the white song info in the lower-left skipped a part of its fade-in animation (denoting lag), then the song went on. Off-beat arrows, then a freeze.

I emptied the cache again, closed Firefox (version 0.9.1), and then reopened and tried Soul Shift. The song info skipped again, the arrows were off, and it froze.

I honestly don't think cache has anything to do with the problems. I've never played Dendrite since... oh man, since the old orange format. Even so, I noted the arrows weren't in tune with the music. Also, when the lag hits or when I get kicked out instantly, the background takes a second to appear. I originally thought this was part of the problem, but it seems that anything going on in the background has the same lag "skip" as the song info.

My net connection has been the same as before the problem started, so I'm hesitant to accuse that.