Archive for the 'Flash Flash Revolution' Category

LD needs test data!

EDIT: Thanks, check back later!

-LD

Header Updated

Just did some changes to the header. Cleared up unused space from the old ad layout.

If you’re having any problems, clearing your cache should fix them. If you’re not sure how, this will help you through it.

~Velocity

Bluenote/Synth Songs

For the uninformed: The bluenote/synth songs are a number of older songs from the earliest days of the site, where the files were actually made basically in notepad with some frame timings on them. As a result, they’re pretty wildly offsync, and as they predate the period where notes were coloured based on their timing, are blue noteskinned throughout.

What happened is that the list of synth/bluenote songs was moved from their various genres into the “Support” genre, which previously held only the three songs obtainable by buying the artist’s album in the FFR Shop.

The Bluenote/Synth songs, being in Support, are no longer public, which is why you’ll have lost public AAAs/FCs and the total public song count is down. Since they’re in the Support Genre right now, and nobody happens to own the tokens (since they don’t exist) the songs aren’t available for play, which is why you can’t find them.

Anybody who is a veteran, or still has subscriber benefits can see their ranks on the “Token level rank” page. Your scores still exist, the songs still exist, and you haven’t lost any AAAs or FCs.

The Support Genre is going to be renamed to “Legacy” containing all of the old songs that weren’t created under the new noteskinning/syncing system.

The Legacy Genre -will- be a public genre. The songs will be available to everybody, and once that is done, the songs will re-appear in the normal levelranks page, and the profile bars will re-update with the old number of songs, and your old AAA/FC counts.

Nobody has lost songs, nobody has lost AAAs, nobody has lost FCs, we’re just being careful with the databases as we get these moved over, taking it slowly, making backups, to ensure that no data is lost.

-Devonin

Bots get out

We had some issues with our internal resolvers on the server that was causing emails not to work properly. This was fixed a few days ago by Synth, you might’ve noticed that challenges and profiles information is going out to your emails now.

Now that this is working I have set up new registrations to require email validation. This is mostly done so that the staff doesn’t have to waste their time banning people who have a big proxy list and are bored enough to keep registering new accounts. As such, when signing up a new account or registering an alt, make sure you provide a valid e-mail address.

Additionally, the registration page now uses a signup CAPTCHA, this was done because I have seen two spambots sign up and flood profile walls over the past month.

Regards,
aperson

Incoming credit changes

We’re changing the structure of credits since the current implementation strikes us as a bit silly. Currently, the cap has been raised from 40 to 60. We slightly changed the counting method so what the game reports and how many credits actually get added might be off-by-one until we update the flash.

In the future, we plan on changing the credit formula to credits / 75,000 and removing the credit cap altogether. This is just a heads up since you will be seeing the amount of credits you earn per song change in the future.

Also, for those of you that play on Velocity’s engine, it now records scores, credits, and replays. You will not be able to load any secret or token songs that you do not have access too, however, because of some new checks we put in place.

Stats update rewriting

aperson, Velocity, and Sprite- have just rewritten the code that updates your stats after a game is played. This change should be transparent if you are a legitimate player. We added a few new security checks and optimized the code flow taking it from 750 lines to 450.

If you have any issues with scores, tokens, or challenges after a song is played, please post in the comments.

In other news…
Velocity has been working on the ProChat code and has released version 2.8.0. This version includes toggle-able timestamps for messages and a stats window when you click on someone’s username in the room list.

Cheers,
-aperson

Someone set up us the bomb (ap I’m looking @ you)

Jonathan | Velocity: Tyler broke shit, others failed at fixing, wild synth appeared. Shit fixed, Vet Alive, MP updates coming.
Amy: The database housing FFR got into a wizard-of-oz like mess. It had to find its way to the wonderful wizard of oz to get its brain back. Along the way it met Synthlight, aperson and Sprite-. The end.
Amy: and yes… aperson is the cowardly lion.
Dom: tl;dr: verify yo backups
Dom: -FFR Staff

aperson’s Lesson of the day: If you’re going to restore from a backup make sure the backup itself isn’t corrupt.
That’s a tough lesson to learn. We lost our master VBulletin User table after aperson tried to roll back the user table to a backup he had just made that was corrupt.

The next morning, Synth got the user table from his backup that he used to bring the site back up in October. Lightdarkness patched in the new userids from our game statistics, and then Sprite and aperson went through and updated all of the table information to be coherent with the other tables. Fortunately, lots of the information was stored elsewhere. We were able to update the passwords that were changed during this period because VBulletin is nice enough to store every password ever used.

There were a few things we were not able to restore however. Custom Avatar information has become corrupted due to a mismatch in where the avatar is linking to for any users that changed their avatars since October 10. In the restore process, we have lost approximately 0.05% of the userbase on FFR. However, we will be glad to work with any of the affected accounts to restore them or transfer their stats to a new account. You may PM an admin for assistance if you have created a new account since the site came back online on October 10.

For some good news, we are rolling out veteran status. Initially, this will be set for users who have both 3 years since their join date and 3 billion grand total points. This limit is subject to opening up, but not becoming more restrictive. We will be changing the word ‘Subscriber’ to the word ‘Veteran’ over & over shortly, as well.

Also!
Expect some MP updates coming soon

Staff List

Since FFR has come back online, there have been lots of changes made, and we’ve finally had enough time to figure out who is active and who isn’t. After careful consideration we have trimmed inactive members out of the staff list and brought a few new people in that we believe will fit the site well. We have made most of our changes, though there might be minor changes to this list in the future.

Without further ado, here’s the staff team:

Site/Server Admin: Synthlight
Sysadmins: aperson/Sprite-/lightdarkness

Development team:
- PHP: aperson, Sprite-, lightdarkness
- CSS/HTML/graphics: darkshark
- Databases: aperson, Sprite-
- Flash: Velocity
- Stepchart Leader: Jimerax
- Music Acquisition: kid_merkury

Stepchart Judges:
jimerax (Judge lead)
bmah (Batch manager)
Patashu
kommisar
who_cares973
Gundam-Dude
TC_Halogen
Silvuh
Korygon
Vote4Nixon

Moderation team:
- Moderation admins: Sprite-, devonin
- Global forum moderators: stretchypanda, jimerax
- Local forum moderators: Netjet!, Specforces, kid_merkury, All_That_Chaz, ravenhexa, Kagome, edubardus, cenright, MalReynolds
- Prochat/Profiles moderators: All_That_Chaz, ananana, ravenhexa, Kagome, kid_merkury, edubardus, Windscarredfaith, Purplepoise, Eternal_0, stretchypanda, Andiana, JenovaSephiroth, TwilightPrincess
- MP moderators: Kagome, kid_merkury, Windscarredfaith, DJ_Swabber, RB_quackies
- VC moderators: ananana, ravenhexa, Kagome, kid_merkury, edubardus, cenright, Purplepoise, Eternal_0, MalReynolds, Specforces

Note that this list is not finalized, though it is close. The stepchart judges in particular is a fluid group right now. Inactive members will be removed and new members will be brought in as needed. There is no need to ask us, we’ll ask you if we’re interested in having you judge or be a moderator.

What’s been happening?

Since we came back Online on October 10th, our development team has been in full swing, with several dedicated developers putting in hours of work each night to bring anything that’s broken back online and spruce up what’s already working. Here is a partial list of the changes that have been made since our last update:

Fixes
- User profiles have been restored as well as our profile chat feature.
- The forums are working properly, including avatars which were originally broken
- FFR’s main flash (excluding multiplayer) is now almost functioning correctly. Everything appears to be good except for the FFR Shop; we are still having issues purchasing songs in sporadic situations. However, this issue only affects new purchases. Any songs that are already purchased will still show up under the Purchased category.
- Multiplayer is back online in working beta form. There are still many bugs with it, but thanks to Dragon Shot’s hard work, you can now play online with all of your friends! Click here to start playing!
- The database has been optimized to bring better loading times. There were many database lookups that ran slowly due to poor design. aperson has gone through and optimized them to improve site performance.

Removals
- The Simfile Database has been disabled and will not be brought back at any time in the future. We don’t have the time nor patience to deal with a huge DMCA liability. We are considering bringing it online in the future so that users can access their own files for archival.
- R2, MeTrivia, Yahtzee, and other various non-essential parts of the site have been removed since development on them has ceased.

New Things!
- The replay engine has been rewritten by Dragon Shot and is now in use for any replays that you view.
- A new token song has been added. Pass Big Blue V1 to unlock it
- Video chat is in the works too! Unfortunately, it will have to be a complete code rewrite. But rest assured, we have not forgotten about VC and we will be working hard to bring it back online. However, there is not currently an estimated time at which it will be released.
- The new era staff list is being finalized and will be posted on the front page next week once we have decided exactly who will be filling what roles.

Subscriber Changes
We are doing away with Subscribers. Instead of being a subscriber, we will offer the special subscriber features to those who have attained veteran status. This is tentatively set to activate once you have been a member for 3 years or once you have reached 3 billion grand total points. Be on the lookout for an update with this veteran status implemented soon!

It looks like most of the bugfixing is about done, so expect lots of new features and changes on the way soon!

Best regards,
The new FFR Team