Samus's guide to FFR

[botchi246]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

What is arrowsmash

[V-Ormix]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

I'm bored, here's a wall of text my semi-advanced FFR guide for laughs with an overly high amount of unnecessary theory: (Suggested at anyone D1-D7 who took the time to read the FAQ for terminology and hopefully get their first AAA.)

This guide exist for only one reason. You played a song, you got a good/average/miss/boo and you're not sure why. You may have some ideas, but you're not sure exactly how to approach that problem anymore.
This guide is actually about taking that big word called "Skillz" and turning it into concepts that you can relate to and eventually use as a guideline to practice and improve.

---

FFR Skillz are divided in 5 categories: (The % is about how much you should invest in each)

25% Concentration/Consistency/Keyboard setup [The Flow]
40% Stamina/Conditioning/Speed [Self-Benchmark]
20% Muscle Memory/Anticipation vs Reflexes/Skillsets/Playstyles [Execution]
10% Settings/Judge Offset/Adjustment [Tuning]
5% Lag/Computer/Standalone Flash Player/Framers [Artificial Difficulty]

---

~ [The Flow] ~ (This is different than accuracy, creating a flow won't guarantee extreme accuracy, only good enough accuracy to stay in the AAA timing with FFR. Getting additional accuracy is obviously welcome, but not necessary.)

This is the ability to maintain your speed and the AAA/FC at same time. It's pure control where you outspeed the song or at least maintain your accuracy and speed high enough to do the entire song properly. I consider that getting AAAA is the extreme form of creating a perfect flow. It should not be your goal directly, but a guideline as to what you should try to do. In terms of semi-advanced guide, I won't get in details as to how to quad songs (that would be an advanced guide), I'm just going to focus on how to get Rank 1/AAAs on FFR as this is hard enough to do already. Keep in mind that quadding hard songs on FFR is practically impossible due to the nature of the game. A song has to have near perfect conversion to let you hold Amazings on it. It is not the case for the great majority of every songs. Even the best player in the world should only be able to quad a handful of songs on FFR. It's not something you have to worry about.

...but how do we create a Flow? You have to practice a few things:

---

Concentration:
- This is used to identify patterns and start them properly. (Yes, we usually call this "Reading notes". Very simple to understand, very hard to master!)

What are the main problems that can happen if I lack concentration?

1. The arrows could be moving too fast, making you unable to keep up with them.
Keep in mind that while reading fast is good, you should pick a speedmod that you can comfortably hit the pattern your reading speed is the worse at. Example: There's no point to optimize your speedmod for streams if when you try to read jumpstream you get overwhelmed by all the arrows. You should use the speedmod that feels the most comfortable with the hardest patterns for yourself. *I personally keep swapping speedmods for complex 32nd sections and dense jumpstream until I find the right middle*

2. The arrows could be moving too slow, making you lose your rhythm.
You usually want to move up your speedmod, get some space and a speed that fit more properly with your reflexes. The alternative is to screencut so you can take advantage of how slow the arrows are moving and anticipate patterns to hold AAA on, but this is only a backup strategy for quick AAAs that are within reach. If your goal is to get better overall, you shouldn't focus on doing this.

3. You could get confused because there's too many patterns at same time(a) or in a row(b).
A) If a pattern left you confused, it's important to take the time to stop, possibly take a screenshot, check a replay, isolate the pattern and figure out how it works. This is the best way to solve mindblocks and to move on. Mindblocks only exist because you created them with bad habits. A mindblock happens because you're unconsciously trying to hit each arrows perfectly and you unconsciously try to hit a certain pattern "as best as you can", but you're clearly doing something wrong. This something wrong can only be fixed if you know exactly where each parts of the pattern start and how to properly hit it.
B) If you mess up because a pattern constantly repeat itself, you have to keep in mind that a pattern that repeat itself is more complicated because it builds up pressure on your fingers over time. Therefore, you will eventually run out of stamina even if at first you could hit them right. The longer a pattern will repeat itself, the more it will put pressure on your fingers. The most obvious example of this is a jack. The longer a jack is, even if it's in your comfort zone, the more it will drain your energy. An unusual pattern like an awkward set of jumps, known as anchors can also create the same problem. You may need to isolate them, practice them by hitting keys lighter/using different posture/setup and if it's still not enough, you may have to train yourself to increase your max speed for them. I consider this a concentration issue if you overreact or try to mash these patterns instead of getting ready to hit them like every other patterns. Saving stamina and using it properly to hit these works with Consistency which is the next tool needed for a "Flow".

You can train Concentration by:
- Taking breaks (from a few hours/days up to a month) Take that break when you feel like it and go at your pace. This isn't work, it's a game. Even if you want to play it competitively, you shouldn't burn yourself out over it.
- Eating well, sleeping well, exercice etc. (yes, you can skillboost by changing your bad life habits! I mostly moved from D4 to D5 by doing this only.)
- Taking care of yourself in any way you can think of. (You will most likely play better if you're not worried about anything in your life and having fun while playing because you can fully dedicate yourself on hitting notes properly.)
- Conditioning will give you a temporary fairly solid boost too. (I refer to that quick 30min-2hours warm up session on Stepmania/FFRMania/FFR on rates etc. where you play hard files you can barely do, just to make sure you're ready to play.)
- Playing with a speedmod slightly higher than what you normally use. (It's something that you should try doing once in a while, if after a few songs it still feels too fast, you can just go back to your normal speedmod. It should visually feel slower than before because your eyes tried to adapt to the higher speedmod.)

---

Consistency:
- This is your ability to distribute your stamina to maintain control as long as possible.
- This is also your ability to finish a pattern properly to transition to the next pattern as fast as possible.

What are the main problems that can happen if I lack Consistency ?

4. You can gradually lose speed while moving from one pattern to another.
I've placed emphasis on making sure you start patterns correctly, but finishing patterns correctly is also important, but not as much as starting them properly. If you start a pattern properly, you'll create a scenario where it's as easy as it can be to maintain your stamina and your speed until the end of the pattern. In this scenario, it should be fairly easy to raise your finger back and move to the next pattern. If for some reason, a pattern is simply very hard and you need to transition into another pattern without having the time to raise back your hand, there's some shortcuts you can take to save "tempos"*. You can by example sacrifice some stamina to hit multiple jumps in a row that continued after a pattern. Just think at all these songs with mini-jacks in them, jumps+notes or jumps close to each others in a row after a pattern. You can double tap the second to last note of a long jack to push your finger away so you don't have to raise your finger back by yourself. If some patterns are awkward because of their slowness (think at very slow [1][3][2][4] repetitive notes by example. You can hit them harder and use stamina to your advantage to push your hands away from the keyboard so you can delay yourself back to finish these patterns without completely breaking your flow.) * You want to voluntary delay yourself this way rather than moving back your hands and hitting the pattern because you'll be able to conserve more speed/stamina which may useful for the next few patterns (!) *

Tempo*: This is chess terminology for doing a move with more than one function. Example: You move a pawn forward to defend/attack, but you also create space from where your pawn was before for your other pieces to attack etc. In one move, you managed to accomplish multiple goals at once usually giving you a small edge. In FFR's context, I'm using this word to describe the fact that you can simply not raise back your hand and rapidly chain other patterns at the cost of stamina that you saved to hit patterns that may have normally made you mess up. I'm pretty sure you can think of a few charts with these patterns. (hi bmah)

5. You can get "random" goods!
Maybe you hit your keys a little too early, maybe you hit them a little too late. When you get this good you usually know you moved a little too quickly or not fast enough while doing a pattern. You can adjust your judge offset if it's slightly wrong by playing the specific song for a while, going to the score result screen, right clicking where it says Speed: Mirror: etc. and checking which value the game is giving you and then using this value. Keep in mind that you probably want to stay fairly close to judge offset 0 if you're playing a song with patterns that you want to manipulate. Jumptrilling rolls with a high or low judge offset could be a little more difficult than intended. Practicing AAA-holding on songs or patterns you have trouble to keep AAA on will help as well.

You can train Consistency by:
- Playing files that are slightly too easy for you and focus on your accuracy as much as possible. (makes you create a buffer of accuracy that absorb all your potential small mistakes that aren't bad enough yet to turn your perfects into goods)
- Playing files that are slightly too hard (!) for you to focus on your ability to hold combo as much as possible. (this practice stamina distribution and the goal is usually to try to maintain a clean looking score @ X-0-0-0 or as close as possible to this.)
- Adjusting your Judge offset as needed. (You should only care about this if you get more perfects than amazings when you play)

---

Keyboard setup
- What keys you're using will affect greatly what kind of scores you will get and even what kind of patterns you're good and bad at! What I'm going to explain is valid for spread players only.

What are the main problems with Keyboard Setup?

6. My keyboard don't work when there's 3-4 keys at same time!
You probably want to go on this site:
https://www.microsoft.com/appliedsci...explained.mspx
..and make sure that the 4 keys you're using are all triggered properly at same time. If you can't find anything that works, you may have to find another keyboard.

7. I have no clue what keys to use on my keyboard, what should I do? I think it matters.
- Far away keys are known for helping players to hit stream more easily. (QW and some numpad keys like 89/ZX,. etc.)
- Close keys are known for hitting jump/jacks more easily. DFJK, CVNM (only 1-2 keys in-between)
- Mid-range are fairly hybrid and should do decently such as QWOP, ASKL etc. (4-6 keys in-between)
^ This is only half-true. The only reason why this would be true is that your hands would naturally be inclined in a different way by using these styles. Close styles usually keeps your fingers inclined at 45 degree. Far away style is close to 90 degree and hybrid is like 60 degree or so.

If you're bad at doing streams or jacks. It's probably because you've been using one of the two wrong settings to play. Having your fingers too much inclined will make you slip more often and make you get random boos. Playing with fingers at near 90 degree will make jacks feel really awkward to hit and your fingers will receive a lot more pressure from the keys as they directly throw the pressure back at the tip of your fingers.
You can google about how to use a proper "piano posture" and adapt this directly to FFR. tl;dr: You want to have your hands mid-air falling at like 60 degree which is a good compensation. You can rest one hand for additional stability.

As for where exactly to place your hands, you can simply try to close your eyes and let your hands fall on your keyboard naturally and then you use whatever is close to these keys.

A fun thing to keep in mind is that if you're really good at jacks but weak at stream you can raise your hand a little more to like 70-80 degree and you should get control for stream, rolls and all these accurate patterns. The opposite is also true. You can also change your hand posture slightly for specific patterns.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Laptop Keyboards, Mech Keyboards and Keyboards in general all feel fairly different when you play them. Mech keyboards feels like an ideal mix of laptop keys while keeping normal solid keys, but may cost a bit more for the advantage. If you own a laptop there's good chances you have a good keyboard for accuracy, just make sure you don't pound keys too hard. If you only have a normal rubberdome keyboard, depending on the brand it can do the job as well. *I personally prefer mech keyboard because to me it feels like they're pretty versatile no matter how you play with them.

You also probably want to avoid wireless keyboards for input delays etc. this is not the best game for them.

---

Summary of ~[The Flow]~

So, basically by having concentration, you should be to constantly identify and start patterns correctly. You can then move on to distributing your stamina properly in case there's tricky patterns. Being able to maintain your consistency will make you avoid losing speed and hopefully hold that AAA if the song is within your physical limits. Of course, this is all assuming you're placing yourself properly while playing and you feel comfortable hitting every patterns as accurately as possible.

Last few indicators that your flow could be improved;

1. You did multiple patterns and started losing almost enough stamina to lose control except that none of them were jacks or anchors jumps. (stream and jumpstream in general can be practiced enough to not burn your stamina much unless the pattern repeat itself indefinitely)
2. You hit keys really quickly at a not constant pace in a very erratic way like "fast galops" or "quick bursts", but no continuity. (this can happen if you're using a low speedmod and hit what you see instead of feeling the speed and using the space adequately.)
3. You're mashing. (please don't bother anymore unless you're playing some dump file in FFRMania, not only combo-scoring no longer matter, but you're probably wasting more stamina mashing than if you hit the notes properly.)
4. You have a lot of trouble doing transitions from one pattern to another. (You may want to do a bit of planning on this as you can take a break in the middle of certain patterns or even do clever things like hitting patterns with multiple purposes at same time.)

---

~ [Self-Benchmark] ~

I'll continue this if there's some kind of interest. This guide is probably more useful for myself than the other players because I can easily explain what's going on and why. I don't expect the average player to read this and become illuminated suddenly and fix all their weaknesses magically. I also realize I should simplify this post.

learn 2 smash arrows like haku's waifu

[mrpreggers]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

this game is playing on your own/with a friend for a few weeks
stumbling into mp and seeing the regulars AAAing FMO+ files
learning that changing your speed and setup will make you better from those regulars
playing for a few months getting better slowly
being forced to play a dump by rapta and seeing how fun it can be
being dedicated enough to buy a new keyboard and play dumps to get good

[Gundam-Dude]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

- Osu! and Sound Voltex default scroll direction is Down
- Cabinet Rhythm Games (ITG, PiU, DDR, etc.) default scroll direction is Up

actually, every rhythm game that isn't based off the concept of pad play (using your feet) scrolls downward by default and can't be changed. you shouldn't really be using the term "cabinet rhythm games" strictly for those because that applies to basically every single rhythm game, except for consoles and mobile apps.

games that scroll downward: osumania, o2jam, djmax trilogy, beatmania iidx, pop'n music, reflec beat, sound voltex, guitar hero, rock band, deemo, kshootmania, and yeah basically every other rhythm game ever. that's not to say that there aren't exceptions, like djmax technika and taiko no tatsujin which scroll sideways, and other games like jubeat, rerave, groove coaster, osu, and cytus that don't have a defined scroll direction.

the only arcade games to ever have a default scroll direction being up are literally those three games you named (itg, piu, and ddr).

[Tyson ultima]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

ways to get good:
Play the game
Play everything
Use speedmods

There saved paragraphs of reading.

[_Zenith_]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

actually, every rhythm game that isn't based off the concept of pad play (using your feet) scrolls downward by default and can't be changed. you shouldn't really be using the term "cabinet rhythm games" strictly for those because that applies to basically every single rhythm game, except for consoles and mobile apps.

games that scroll downward: osumania, o2jam, djmax trilogy, beatmania iidx, pop'n music, reflec beat, sound voltex, guitar hero, rock band, deemo, and yeah basically every other rhythm game ever. that's not to say that there aren't exceptions, like djmax technika and taiko no tatsujin which scroll sideways, and other games like jubeat, rerave, groove coaster, osu, and cytus that don't have a defined scroll direction.

the only arcade games to ever have a default scroll direction being up are literally those three games you named (itg, piu, and ddr).

lmao

Sincerely thank you for correcting me because I have no knowledge of a majority of rhythm games other than the several I mentioned and I learned something from this post

I figured afterwards that I might have misused the term Cabinet but I didn't have a better word for it at that moment in time

[lurker]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

has therapingdragon been at all relevant in the past 7 years
also why did this turn into a giant dickwagging contest immediately you guys have no chill

[choof]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

posting in this thread so dossar can give me another stepmania related infraction

[lurker]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

tbh i don't think yet another guide was necessary but nearly every single reply in this thread is pathetic

[Charu]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

I just skimmed through the thread.

Is someone being a jerk here?

[ilikexd]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

i hope someone else posts a guide here

[V-Ormix]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

no, some one is being dic

edit: didn't omgitsnpv have a guide to ffr? or maybe im confusing him with some one else...

[Deadlyx39]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

Here's my FFR guide

1. Learn how to hit your keys on your keyboard really fast.
2. Read the notes while hitting keys fast.
3. ??????????
4. Profit.

[Rapta]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

I wonder where I would be right now if I followed an FFR guide instead of figuring everything out myself..

If only I could clone myself and have one of them play whilst following a guide!

[Hakulyte]

Re: Samus's guide to FFR

My waifu thinks that you're all very unlikely to become the very best so, you may as well go to the kitchen and learn how to make delicious food.