Hope For the Best

So while I sit comfy in Chicago, our dedicated servers are located in.. Yup.. You guessed it, Houston. If for some reason FFR goes down in the next 24 hours, we have made an offsite backup of all files and databases.. All 20gb+ worth. Lets hope for the best, not just for us but for all the people affected by the hurricane.

CLICK YOUR BRAINS OUT!!! NOW!!

*EDIT SYNTHLIGHT* – We know everyone has been trying hard to win this contest. We have reduced the random number generator by another digit. This means that the odds are that someone in the next 100,000 clicks will win. This should take approximately 12 hours but that depends on the rate of the clicks.

*EDIT SYNTHLIGHT* – We have lowered the random number generator by quite a few digits in order to make the contest easier to win. If many people play, we can probably land on a winner within 24 hours. Good luck!

See first news post for contest entry.

So Mr. lightdarkness went and did something crazy again. Being the crazy bastard that he is, he is providing a copy of "In The Groove" for PS2 to anyone who wins our little contest.

Some questions you may ask yourself are "How difficult is it to enter this contest?", "Who’s hiscore will I have to beat in order to win?", "Do I need to know C++ to enter?" and "How many admins to I have to suck up to in order to win?". The answer is.. well.. JUST CLICK THE DAMN ITG LOGO TO ENTER!! The more you click, the more chances you have to win. Each time you click the logo, it generates a new number and if that number matches the winning number on the server, YOU WIN!

Simple? Yes. Time Consuming? That depends on how dedicated you are. Fun and interesting? Definately.

Please follow these simple rules when playing:

Try as many times as you wish.

You must be LOGGED IN in order to win.

You must not soil your pants in anticipation.

Hackers (autoclickers too) will be dealt a savage beating.

LD will mail you the copy of ITG after the system notifies us of the win. If someone doesn’t win after a week, the number of possible digits for the win number will reduce by 1 each week until we have a winner.

Good luck!

Cheers,

Synthlight & lightdarkness


*EDIT SYNTHLIGHT* – YOU MUST HAVE FLASH 8 PLAYER IN ORDER TO SEE THE NUMBERS!! If the numbers come up blank, you are using Flash Player 7.

FFArt – Week 2

Sorry for the delay on this one, guys. I’ve been in Wales since early Friday morning, just got back, and haven’t had internet access all weekend.

I’ve picked contest winners for last week’s art contest!

WINNERS:
Below The Surface: Ilse Velázquez
Burnout: Alan Newhouse
Love You Anymore: Shastina Helmers

NOTE TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED: I was really, really blown away at the huge number of very good entries we received for all three songs. I’d love to hand out “honorable mentions” but to be honest, there are so many quality submissions that if I listed all the names of the dozens of talented artists who submitted work you’d think I was just trying to make people feel good. It’s true though. If you didn’t win this time, try again!


NOTE TO WINNERS: Do not share your winning artwork with anyone else. We’re very secretive about what we’re working on, and we look forward to showcasing your art in 3rd Style once it’s finished. And feel free to keep entering! You can win as many times as your artwork merits.

This week’s songs you want to do art for are:

Song For The Nihonjins
Computer Dreams
The Return F Superdouble

Note: Song for the Nihonjins is in the Shop if you don’t have it. If you do have it, it’s in the Purchased section.

Remember:
550×400
PNG
Original artwork only
Include your real name and FFR username
[email protected]
Due: 11:59 PM on Friday, September 23rd

Cheers,
Chardish

Woah? Sims are back?

Hey everyone, Synth was supposed to make this nice long news post about how I worked my butt off on this new simfile section for FFR. Instead, he spent the night googling his name for funny pictures.

Therefore, this is the extent of the news post The Simfile section is up! You may now upload your original files that you’ve created for DWI, Stepmania, ect. Either click here or click FFR Simfiles on the top row.

Also, I will be looking for people to moderate the simfile section, so if you are interested, please PM me on the forums.

Cheers,

LD

*EDIT SYNTHLIGHT* hhahahaaha.. check this out everyone Yeah

Make Original Art For FFR!

Have you ever wondered how you could help influence FFR: The Game?

Have you ever wanted to see your own work in a game played tens of thousands of times, every day?

Do you have no musical talent, but plenty of artistic talent?

FLASH FLASH REVOLUTION WANTS YOU!

Here’s how it works. We think it’s finally time that we stepped up and added backgrounds to all the songs that don’t have them for 3rd Style.

But we have over 100 songs in FFR, and we thought it would be only right to let other people in on the fun. Thus, We’re starting a new project called “FFArt” in search of people to design backgrounds for FFR!

This is how we roll:
-Every Sunday, I will post the name of the three songs we’re looking for backgrounds for this week for on our mainpage, right here.
-You have until Friday to let your creative juices run wild and come up with an awesome-looking background for the song. You can enter one song, two, or three! Take your pick! You can even enter multiple backgrounds for each song if you want – but please submit only your best work.
-Then, you email it to [email protected]. In the subject line, you put the name of the song your art is for. You attach your image, and you give us your FFR username in the body of the message. You also give your real name. Any images submitted become our property, though we will give you full credit for the work.
-If a song has a current background (like Delirium, or Domani, or Pondering Stuff, or FF7 Battle) the current background is judged along with all the other backgrounds.
-On Saturday, we meet clandestinely in secret council under cover of night. After putting our hands on an ancient tome of unspeakable horror and swearing dark oaths never to reveal anything spoken there, under pain of slow torture, we decide what the coolest-looking image is to go in our fun flash game for each song.
-If we don’t like any of the images very much, we’ll put that song “on hold.” We’ll ask for images for that song again later on.
-If your image wins, hooray for you! You not only get your image put in 3rd Style, but also your username goes in the song loading screen as the graphic maker, and your real name goes in the game’s end credits!

Now, here are some requirements for the image itself.
-Do not use images from Google Images, please. You can use these sparingly, and as source images (if you later make them unrecognizable somehow), but your work should be 95% original.
-No copyrighted characters for no good reason. This means if you’re doing a background for Abtrusity, Naruto does not belong here, no matter how much you may like Naruto. EXCEPTION: Arcade songs may feature artwork/references to the games that they reference.
-We have a couple remixes that have been from other music games. Don’t reference those music games. They wouldn’t be happy.
-Backgrounds should contain the name of the song but not the artist.
-Try to keep a reasonably low level of contrast in your image to make reading the arrows easy.
-The feel of the background should mimic the feel of the song. Secret Zombie Room should not have a bright pink background with hearts and flowers.
-PNG format, 550×400. Keep in mind that the very top and very bottom of your image will be cut off by interface elements.

Very Important: If all you have is MS Paint, please do not enter. We are looking for professional-quality images, and MS Paint is not a program for professional quality. If you are looking for a free Photoshop-like program, try The GIMP. It can do about 2/3 of what Photoshop can do, and it’s free. Go to gimp.org to get it. It’s available for Linux, Windows, and Macs.

That said, since everyone’s new at this, we’ll get started already!

The first 3 images are due at 11:59 PM Eastern time on Friday, September 16th. And here’s what you’re making!

Burnout
Love You Anymore
Below The Surface

Take your pick, or enter for all three!
Good luck, and have fun!

Remember that email is [email protected].

Cheers,

Chardish, Synthlight, and the rest of the 3rd Style team

Vote!

One of our very own users and FFR coders (R1 continued development) Danny
Miller has been nominated for an award at Macromedia. He has been nominated
under the Interactive Media category for his game Psychopath, which I think you
all know by now. We are asking that if you like Psychopath and want to help
Danny win, take 15 seconds out of your lives and go vote for his game

HERE as we would, I am sure he will appreciate it. Danny will also be
working with us on some "secret" projects in the near future (DON’T ASK!!). So
keep an eye out for his name.

again, you can vote at

http://macromedia.com/resources/student/innovation/gallery/2005fall/ Under Interactive Media

Cheers,
Synthlight

 

Time For Me To Do My Part

I have been so worried lately about paying the bills for the
servers and trying to grow FFR. And… then.. hurricane Katrinia happened. I
have been watching quite a bit of news and really cannot imagine what it must be
like to be stuck in a city during the sweltering heat, not a place to go,
nothing to eat and ontop of all that, lose everything I worked my entire life
for. Can you imagine? I mean, can you really imagine? What would you do? Forget
going back to work, work doesn’t even exist for those people anymore. By the
time this is over with, I am sure we are going to see thousands dead and
hundreds of thousands homeless.

I must say that this has hit me pretty hard and I would like to announce that I
will (for atleast the next month) be donating all profits from the FFR Store
sales (that includes everything) to the American Red Cross.. Yes, 100% of profits
will be donated directly to the American Red Cross on behalf of
FlashFlashRevolution and all the people who support it.

I do my part around here every month and provide a fun game for everyone and
think it is about time that I think about something other than my hobby. I will
also be donating any donations made to FFR (via the donate button on the bottom
left) directly to the American Red Cross. I believe these people need the money
way more than I do. If you are able to donate or purchase anything, thank you
very much. I will be posting the names and websites on the main page in 30 days
of everyone who makes a purchase or donates. This will drive traffic to your
site and show people your generosity.

By clicking on the logo below, you can donate to FFR and 100%
of that money will be sent to the American Red Cross.

My thoughts go out to everyone affected by Katrina.. Good luck
to them all and thank you to everyone who donates.

Raising Money for Development & Server Costs.

T-shirts and stickers are officially on sale! We are using this money to pay for our outstanding server costs and speed up development of certain features. If you would like to help us out (I beg of you!) please click on the FFRSTUFF link above and purchase a t-shirt or vinyl sticker. We have taken steps to ensure that these products are of the highest quality and you won’t be dissapointed. I will be posting photo examples of the 6×6 vinyl stickers later on tonight.

As always, we use 100% of the profits to pay for our ever growing FFR server costs and further the development of the game. I never personally profit from any of this.

So go buy something now and support FFR before I make you feel guilty!

NOTE: Shipping on the stickers will start next week, while the t-shirts might be 2-3 weeks.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Yikes! My Pants!

Omg.. Omg.. Omgwtfbbqamazinggrace… There is so much going on, where do I
start?

Well, lets start this off by formally introducing a new and permanent
addition to the FFR menu called IIR, or Internet Independent Ranking. The
purpose of IIR is to provide a spot for you to keep track of your
accomplishments on Dance Dance Revolution. The current version is still in beta
and only supports the arcade version of DDR Extreme. We will be adding support
for the home versions, arcade versions of DDR and other dance games in the near
future.

To get started on IIR, you’ll need to activate your account. To do this, click
on the link provided at the top of any IIR page which directs you to activate.
From that screen, you’ll be prompted for a scoretag. What is a scoretag you ask?
A scoretag is the 4-letter code you use to enter your name in high score lists
in many Bemani games. In later versions of IIDX, this was changed to 6 letters,
but we like to keep it as the original 4, since that’s supported by all current
versions of Bemani. Once you’ve activated your account, you can start submitting
your scores that you achieve in the arcade. You can leave comments such as what
speed mods you might have used, or arrow modifications. You can also link a
picture and or video which shows proof of your accomplishment. In the future we
will support uploading of pictures and video directly to the IIR server. Images
and videos will help back up the claim of the scores you enter. You might be
saying "This is so easy to cheat on", well it’s quite obvious to us that if you
submit 100 AAA’s without a single picture, that we will question your
accomplishment. Soon, a reporting system will be implemented so you can in a
sense call "BS" on someone for their accomplishments and affect their "legit"
rating. Also, when you submit a picture or video and it’s verified by our staff,
you’ll gain "legit" points, which basically says that you aren’t lying when
submitting your scores.

Below are some screenshots to wet your appetite.

Enjoy, and let us know of any problems you might encounter!

Click to enter IIR

_______________________

The next order of business? Well that would be FFR R1 3rd Style. A completely
new and redisgned R1. This project started way back many many moons ago when I
Chardish kept approaching me about changing the look and feel of the current FFR.
He had some ideas and started to form them. I have to admit that I was somewhat
of a hard ass and very picky about what I wanted and what I thought did or
didn’t jive. I mean, this current interface has worked for 670,000+ members and
it is something you don’t want to tamper with much. But… in the end he came up
with the basic comps and new structural ideas for many of the new sections and I
was very pleased with what we had ended up with. Now we have started work
breaking down and animating the entire interface with Bemaniruler. Bemaniruler
really is the god of animating interfaces. Once the animation is done, we
will integrate it back into the existing FFR and change FFR where need be in
order to accomodate new features. I promise a more easy to navigate and easier
to read FFR once this is all finished. If that isn’t exciting enough, we have
also secured the amazing artist Yukon Makoto to create all new characters for
FFR. And sticking with the theme of the night, I will leak some blurred
screenshots for ya’ll.

The estimated release of this new version is sometime this fall and will
include many of the features that people have been requesting for the past 6
months but I cannot say what we will or will not include until I have finished
them.
_______________________

The last order of business.. We have designed (thanks to Spigumus) and are
ready official FFR T-shirts which will go on sale in the next few days. The only
problem is that we have 3 designs and will only be able to afford an initial
batch of 2 designs. So I will put up a poll which will let you guys decide which
designs you like the best. The first batch will be ordered this coming week and
we will start delivery (via lightdarkness) 1 month later after they get printed
and shipped to him. If you ask nicely, dreamy LD might even sign your shirt.
Below are the designs 1-3 and they will come in these sizes: X-Large, Large,
Medium, Small.

 

 We will also be producing true vinyl cut FFR stickers based on these
designs for your car windows or whatever you see fit to put them on. These are
not printed on but true cut and hand weeded vinyl stickers in the shape of the
designs above. The first prototypes of these stickers are being printed now and
I will be checking them over the weekend for quality. If they look good then
they will go on sale.

It is important to remember that ALL SALES are NON-PROFIT.. Any money
generated is used to go towards my hosting bills and any additional outside help
that we cannot do ourselves. Lets just say that our bills are more than people
pay in rent for most apartments. I keep FFR free and have done so for 3 years
now. I appreciate any and all support that we get.
_______________________

Well, that’s about it for now. I am sure that I missed something and will
have to edit it in during the next few days. I almost mentioned something about
R2 but we aren’t close enough to mention that yet..

Stay Tuned!

Cheers,
Synthlight

*EDIT SYNTHLIGHT* Looks like the middle design and the design on the right have won the t-shirt contest and will now be going on sale along with all 3 versions of the designs in the form of vinyl stickers. We will be producing t-shirt design #1 on the second or third batch so that we will eventually have all 3 for sale.

Here is the link:

Official FFR T-Shirts & Vinyl Cut Stickers Are On Sale!

Don’t forget that you are supporting a community effort when you purchase products from FFR. We never profit from the sales and use 100% of the money to pay for server costs and further develop FFR.