Testing Testing Testing

# of online users and a few other things might not look right tonight until the new IP has propagated. You should notice a speed increase even though we have not installed php accelerators or optimized anything on the new server yet.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Load Spikes

For the last 2 weeks we have been experiencing massive load spikes on the 5th minute of every hour.. This has caused apache restarting and problems connecting at certain peak times. I just wanted to let everyone know that I finally solved the problem. No, I am not sharing the solution nor the cause.

Cheers,

Synthlight

SERVER CLOCK!!!

Now that I have your attention, I would like everyone to note that server time has been adjusted to be correct. Please adjust your timezones accordingly in your user settings.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Experiment X part 3

Tonight we will be working on a number of improvements and cleanups since the upgrades and will continue to optimize code.

*We have removed the javascript page loading progress bar from all portions of FFR*

Cheers,

Synthlight

Experiment X part 2

Tonight we are moving forward with the changes and will be making the switch to Vbulletin from phpbb (security reasons again). The site will be up but the forums may be closed while we convert things and get the basic Vbulletin section up and running. When the forum comes back up, it will be classic Vbulletin style until we decide on a better style.

Cheers,

Synthlight

(also getting rid of the loading bar madness tonight that you see on each page)

LD EDIT: Forums down, see you all in a few hours!
LD EDIT: We’re still workin’ on it, we haven’t forgotten about you! We’ll work into the night to get things up and running again.
LD EDIT: Getting closer, hang in there!
SYNTH EDIT: 2:18am CST. Just a few minutes away!!
LD EDIT: 3:24 EST. We all know that Eastern time owns Central.
SYNTH EDIT: 4:28 EST. The new forum is up! Complete transfer into a new system. The skin is temporary until we get something solid and good in there. If you don’t like it, you can go into your forum control panel and change it to another default. It took 6 straight hours of writing and writing scripts (thanks LD) and importing countless tidbits. You may need to login once originally but if you register on the main site, it transfers over to the new forum automatically. If you were registered previously on the forum, you are still registered. (LD: Also, if you just registered, you’ll need to click the link on the left (In the menu bar) before being able to login on the forums.)

More to come tomorrow… uhh.. I mean today.

Experiment X

PLEASE Excuse the mess tonight. Finishing some upgrades and it may look EXTREMELY sloppy for the next 12-24 hours. The colors are whacked out and there is whitespace all over the place.

FEB 22 – *I will fix the right blocks cutting off portions of the FFR playfield tonight.*

Cheers,

Synthlight

DDR SuperNOVA

Thanks to nforcer and Neonatrias, FFR has some EXCLUSIVE DDR SuperNOVA pictures for you to see! Check them out in the forums, and let us know what you think! DDR SuperNOVA is the latest arcade mix in the DDR series, and it’s going to be a world wide release! The photos are from a location test in Naperville IL.

Cheers,

lightdarkness, nforcer, and Neonatrias

Synthlight on the Move

Hopefully this news story will answer questions for a wide range of people in the FFR community. I will cover the current status on things like R2, 3rd Style and FFR T-shirts. I will also try to cover some development ideas for the future of FFR and current happenings in my life.

Life:

Lets start first with why I have been so silent for the past couple months. As most of you know, I have been in business for myself for MANY years and occasionally I must work onsite along with clients. As an example, one of my most recent clients has been getting ready for a trade show and needed 200% of my effort in order to prepare certain Flash pieces. When I say 200%, I mean it. I spent 4-5 days at the client’s site with approximately 3 hours during that time in which I was out of the office. I slept a 1-2 hours each day in order to keep my sanity. Luckily though we finished getting ready for the trade show and everything went well.

3rd Style:

3rd Style development started back in the summer / early fall and has continued to move forward but unfortunately slowed to a crawl for the last 2 months. As I have started to work more normal hours this week, this pace has picked up. 3rd style is at the top of my priority list. Besides having a completely new interface, 3rd style will boast MANY new songs upon release and include many features that have been requested for a long LONG time like speed mods, skin changes and BPM change support. I will personally be working on my DWI converter so that it can handle BPM changes. I expect 3rd Style to be released sometime within the month of April. I will say April 31st but it may be sooner depending on my schedule.

This release will be the most radical change for FFR within the last 2 years. Chardish, LD and I (with the input of others) have worked to lay the foundation of the new interface. I admire Chardish for not getting fed up with me everytime I requested visual changes or sent him back to the drawing board. I think in the end we came out with a superb design that will ultimately be easier to navigate and read for both noobs and veterans alike.

R2B2:

Over the past 6-8 months, R2 has been rewritten from the ground up. This time I have not been putting the pressure on Soccr to get everything done ASAP and he assures me that this version is bug free and solid as a rock. The core engine is complete, quick as hell and solid as a rock. Tthe graphics remain similiar but we have switched from keyboard navigation to mouse navigation in order to stop the confusion of new users trying to run R2 and getting frustrated.
Most importantly we will include a new feature that I know everyone will like, the ability to upload your own .mp3 / stepfiles into your account. This will allow you to play your stepfiles from school/home/work/library or wherever you have internet access. After uploading, you will see the songs available in your category listing and will be able to play them as if they were local. The songs will keep a high-score for you just as normal songs are capable of. You will also be able to create a “friends list” and share your uploaded songs with your friends. I will have to limit the amount of server space used by each user account and or IP in order to keep costs down.
Again, I would like to say April 31st for the release date but this depends on quite a few factors. I will work with soccr to see what we can accomplish before April.

FFR Chat:

As most of you know. We have had a few problems with kids causing problems in the chat. I am in the process of rewriting functions for the chat that will prevent these problems and will be patching all known holes. This will come as a release in the next few weeks to a month.

FFR T-Shirts:

I am working this week with LD in order to figure out who has what and what orders I have missed. I will be delivering T-shirts to EVERYONE within the next 2 weeks. Even if you cancelled your order and received a refund, I will STILL be sending you a t-shirt or sticker. While my life is busy as hell, there is no excuse for my late response on all of this. Everyone will get what they ordered, nothing less. As a matter of fact, if you have not received your T-shirt, PM me “Synthlight” in the forums. We will get it taken care of.

Community:

Thanks to everyone who has been part of the FFR community. We now have over 2 million multi-user plays, 800,000+ members, Approximately 230,000-250,000 games played per day and continue to grow at an incredible pace of around 1,500 new members per day. Our site does approximately 1,000,000+ page views per day and shows no sign of slowing down. Oh yeah, it’s still free! It will be interesting to see if these stats change when 3rd Style and R2B2 are released.
I will be going over all staff and community suggestions from the forums while developing these next releases. I want to assure you that your threads are being heard.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Song of the YEAR!

Hey all you FFR’ers out there! I hope you had a great holiday season, and now that you’re all rested, it’s time to put your fingers to the test!

Tonight, we are not only releasing the last song of the ‘week’ for the 2005 year, but it’s also the LONGEST FFR song ever released! You will definatly need to work up some strength for this song, because it’s a MARATHON song. Thats right, over FIVE MINUTES of gameplay! You’ll certainly be able to rack up the points on this one!

Gamepro17616 has stepped for us “MAX Forever” by DM Ashura. It’s a remix of several DDR songs, and it’s quite an awesome addition to the many FFR songs we already have! I’m not going to tell you exactly where the song is, that’s a secret, but I can tell you that the year 2006 has something to do with it!

We hope you all enjoyed the many new songs and features FFR has added over the past year, and we hope to see you through the 2006 year!

Cheers,

lightdarkness