Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

[AndruC]

Alright, I'm new to FFR, but already I'm noticing things that are so very annoying, that just should not be! I've only played the multiplayer so these things don't count apply to single player modes (although they might).

The Challenge/FFR Shop/Credit Count. How do you get rid of this side bar? When I'm picking songs, sometimes it's there covering up valuable info that I would like to actually be able to read.

The Characters. Do these actually DO anything? I see a row of buttons with "characters" that show up as you hover over them, but I've seen no change when playing with differen't buttons selected.

The Genre selections. Alright, so I understand that you use the arrows to find a genre, and click it to open up the song selection for that genre. I also understand that clicking it again will close the song selection. Why are the arrows still usable to scroll to other genres? If they are used, then why doesn't the song seletion change on the fly? If the arrows are used and you want to see the songs of a new genre while another song list is open, you have to click, for some reason, the new genre THREE times.

The Song selection. So once you get your genre open you click the song you want to play to see some info on it (which is covered up by the Complaint #1), and click it again to load. Well, if you're in multiplayer and 1 person loads the song, the game waits for the other person to as well, and if player 2 isn't fast enough, then for some reason, player 1's song disappears from the chat window.

The Multiplayer experience itself. I call this complaint "Which freaking side am I on??". http://www.neom.ca/andru/link/why.png If you follow this link, you will see a usual multiplayer screenshot with my name circled on the right, both times. Any NORMAL person who has no previous experience would assume that this means that I am designated the player on the right. It took me about 4 games to realize, lo, this was not the case. Why are my arrows and ratings "perfect, boo, etc" on the left?? I thought my wireless keyboard was severely lagging because i was seeing misses on the right that weren't mine.

Leaving a challenge area, or room. If I look for a song and load it, why is it that if I leave the room, the song remains selected and loaded? I can even use the arrows (for a bit until the top half of the play area freezes and become unusable).

Please respond with some form of sanity so that I can retain my own...

EDIT: More of my complaints will just be added in here as I come across them.

[AndruC]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Why doesn't the main game menu background music loop? It plays through a bit then just... stops?

I played this mode several times: http://www.neom.ca/andru/link/diagonal.png and I still haven't figured it out. I even tried the numpad diagonal keys with num lock on and off. Clearly those are diagonal arrows, but they don't work. Which arrow is the "up" key, and so on and so forth?

[Synthlight]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Please donate.

Cheers,

Synthlight

[Biff_tech]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Multiplayer isn't perfect, FFR isn't perfect Deal with it, if you don't like it stop playing and leave, the bugs will be fixed eventually but the synthlight team is working thier asses off at 120% to being with so they cant updated and catch everything at onces so when the bugs are fixed there fixed, now im just ranting cause im really tired butyoou get the point.

[AndruC]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

You've gotta be kidding me.

Administration at its finest.

[Squeek]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

More or less, yeah.

While we respect bugreports and the like, keep in mind that this is a non-profit Internet flash game.

The owner is a married parent of (2?) child(ren) who pays for this site from his own pocket.

[Biff_tech]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

sigh... Squeek FTW

[Shashakiro]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Various stuff

You need to read stickies, the MP Guide stickied in FFR General would have explained half that stuff already.

FFR is a free game. Expecting perfection from anything free is folly.

[AndruC]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

You don't have to be professional to avoid these kinds of errors. Most of these errors are just design flaws, not coding bugs. These kinds of flaws should have been noticed during testing before a release. Speaking of release, why is it "version 0.69"? Is it supposed to be an unstable version that's named such to attract teenage perverts?

[Biff_tech]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Speaking of release, why is it "version 0.69"? Is it supposed to be an unstable version that's named such to attract teenage perverts?

I'm sure thats exactly what the team was going for my guess is its just a coincidence. lol

[UberMario]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

1. It's not valuable info.

2. Characters do nothing, just an add on.

3. You shouldn't be picking another genre if you already have one open. Everyone knows you can still click the arrows, just it's a waste of effort. You have to click the second genre three times because it's trying to open it while the other is closing, then you click it to close the one that you just screwed up, and then it opens on the third click. I don't understand why you're asking or complaining about these things.

4. when you click "play a different song" it rolls everything back to start for each player. The first player who clicks that will make it so the stats would show as 0 for everything hinting towards clicking that button because theres no use staying at that screen. If one person already picks a song before the other person gets the chance to click "play a different song", it'll do that. It's a small error and both people can see it. It really doesn't take that much time to pick the song again.

5. Regardless of which spot you take in the multiplayer room, you always are on the left. Always. You should have figured that out within a game or two. If not, you could have asked the person you were playing.

6. The multiplayer area and playing area are two different sections reading from each other, I assume. You can just take down the game just as easily as you picked it.

Really all these questions and complaints could have been answered by yourself. Everyone knows every complaint on here and we're not going to change any of it becuase it isn't affecting our gameplay. Get used to it. 3rd Style is coming out soon anyways, no one really cares about the current game if it still works. Alot of work is getting put into the next game.

Edit: Also, AndruC. I would have quit this game by now if the background music was on repeat.

[Squeek]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

I would think it's merely the next version that came after 0.68. That seems to be pretty accurate with the number of revisions thus far.

To be honest, a lot of time is not spent on the FFR game client any more. The administrators and coding team have moved on to bigger and better projects, like re-working the game client from scratch to (hopefully) nullify the problems that happened in this version.

[Synthlight]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

That is because it is actually at version .69, which is actually the 69th version of that release. You still don't understand the situation here AndruC and continue to do nothing but try to cause problems. You are on the verge of not being welcome.

Cheers,

Synthlight

[UberMario]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Sidenote: Synth, extend the top 100 players to 1000 or 5000 or 10,000. -hassle hassle-

[Squeek]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

I was thinking about something similar with situations that happen at my workplace as well with customers who seek perfection.

You're not going to get it. Especially with coding. Fixing one problem can cause thirty more. The complete overhaul that is 3rd Style is slated to entirely work from the ground up so that problems that occur there are more easily fixed.

Where I work, if you expect perfection, expect disappointment. Cutting wood, glass, paper, and sticking it all together with a print in the middle isn't EVER going to be perfect. Wood chips, warps, bends, has knots, and never wants to line up perfectly. Paper warps, bows, and never holds up under adhesive. Glass is glass. Framing is imperfect and there's no way to make it perfect. We can get very close, and we usually do, but there's no such thing as perfect.

The same can be said for coding a DDR-like Flash game for non-profit use on an Internet website.