FFR Suggestions

[MaxGhost]

Re: FFR Suggestions

Well the point is to have only a very select few to play it.

(admittedly though, I would like to play it myself)

Elitism is ****ing stupid

[bmah]

Re: FFR Suggestions

Alternatively, you can look at it as a high goal one can strive to accomplish. Up to you. *shrugs*

[Ryusei_]

Re: FFR Suggestions

So, I actually made a thread about this but looking back, this seems like a more reasonable place to put it and if nothing else, add my 2 cents to the suggestion list.

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...d.php?t=121253

There's all kinds of things that I'm sure people would like to see FFR and there's still a number of things that we USED to have but no longer do. And it seems like some of the things that were available to us in the past are being bumped down on the list (RIP Video Chat). My concern is that even though people have been outspoken about these features, we're told that they're "low priority" without really being told what's taking precedence over them.

TL;DR version: A list of things (similar to the changelog) that are currently being worked on for FFR instead of answers like "Sorry, that's low on priority"

[igotrhythm]

Re: FFR Suggestions

I thought there was a changelog floating around somewhere already...could be mistaken, though. (I prefer to use the term "inexact science" when describing the development of FFR in the early days, in particular having to make stepfiles right in notepad for lack of more sophisticated tools, in response to the discussion on the last page.)

As for alternative ST get methods...I'm gonna have to agree with Bmah. (This also explains the "you did it once, you can do it again" mentality in the case of bugged-out ST unlocks. It's not meant to be dismissive, but encouraging.)

[YoshL]

Re: FFR Suggestions

I thought there was a changelog floating around somewhere already...could be mistaken, though. (I prefer to use the term "inexact science" when describing the development of FFR in the early days, in particular having to make stepfiles right in notepad for lack of more sophisticated tools, in response to the discussion on the last page.)

As for alternative ST get methods...I'm gonna have to agree with Bmah. (This also explains the "you did it once, you can do it again" mentality in the case of bugged-out ST unlocks. It's not meant to be dismissive, but encouraging.)

there is a changelog, i think he was talking about a seperate thing, indicating the things that are being worked on, like a TODO list for FFR with priority and stuff

[Ryusei_]

Re: FFR Suggestions

there is a changelog, i think he was talking about a seperate thing, indicating the things that are being worked on, like a TODO list for FFR with priority and stuff

This exactly

[Emithith]

Re: FFR Suggestions

You have to remember that when FFR was first created back in 2002, only AS1 existed. Flash 7 and AS2 were released in 2003. Back at that time, actionscript was still very basic and people made due with what they had.

The only real problem is that over the years, FFR was never changed internally to support the demand for more extensive features, and everything was built around it. The fact that Synth was even able to make a rhythm game back so long ago that played smoothly was a big undertaking.

Part of the reason flash lags is honestly flash itself. The graphics engine they use up until Flash 11 and it's Stage3D is complete crap.

If I were to spawn every arrow in a song, and have them move, the old Flash graphics engine would scan EVERY PIXEL to check if it moved which makes total sense, and update accordingly. The happens every frame of course. But, flash also checks every pixel even if it's not in the view port, so if I were to spawn all the arrows, the area that contains the arrows would be massive and would check every pixel in that area. Which is slooooooooooooooooooooooow

Also Actionscript 3.0 added limited support for hardware acceleration (DirectX, OpenGL).

What Synth did was actual smart, by only rendering notes that need to be visible, it prevents a massive amount of lag.

TL;DR: Flash Graphics were and still are garbage except Stage3D that was included in Flash 11. Also Synth is smart and did the best he could years ago.

And just to understand how garbage Actionscript 1/2 are compared to Actionscript 3:

var i = 0;
var extrememememememememememelyLongVarName = 0;

in AS1/2, exemem...VarName is referenced slower then i.
in AS3, both of these are the exact same speed and length doesn't matter.

Interesting. I've always liked learning the quirks of engines. Re-coding would be well worth the time and effort, but it's not even really important. I mean, if you are gonna even think about starting on it you're pretty much gonna have to drop all your current projects for it, because anything you start now will be probably way easier once you get it all finished and polished up.

The one thing that stands in the way is brainstorming the proper approach to this new "engine". I.e. What is wrong with the current way the game reads and sends arrows, and what can you do to destroy that problem.

Alternatively, you can look at it as a high goal one can strive to accomplish. Up to you. *shrugs*

I personally view player goals as [Heavy] -> [Oni] -> St. Scarhand. I like that format, and anyone who wants to play SHand can go on SM, anyway.

[Velocity]

Re: FFR Suggestions

Interesting. I've always liked learning the quirks of engines. Re-coding would be well worth the time and effort, but it's not even really important. I mean, if you are gonna even think about starting on it you're pretty much gonna have to drop all your current projects for it, because anything you start now will be probably way easier once you get it all finished and polished up.

The one thing that stands in the way is brainstorming the proper approach to this new "engine". I.e. What is wrong with the current way the game reads and sends arrows, and what can you do to destroy that problem.

Surprisingly enough, the projects have been in development for a long time. R^2 was started back in September, and the complete site recode even before that.

So dropping all projects really isn't necessary, we're just pacing ourselves so things are done right the first time. It's the amount of work to get everything redone is the worse part.

How the game loads notes into play along with spawning hasn't changed much at all. KBO uses an SM file encoded into an xml file. The engine itself converters ti to both frames, and MS timings. The engine spawns the notes according to the frame number and judges compared to the ms timing. Thirdstyle and even the old R2 from awhile ago did the same thing in essence.

It's really about optimizing all the code that runs during the level, more code/graphic update = more lag.


A small thing I forgot to mention about how the old graphic engine rendered things. Instead of picking the top layer and rendering that, flash renders every layer even ones that can't be seen. Movieclips have a option call "Bitmap Cache" that caches the image into memory instead of rendering the movieclip each time even when it hasn't changed. In order for the bitmap cache to be updated, it has to pass a tolerance level of how many pixels have changed from my understanding. If it passes this point, it updates.

Things that are constantly moving are slower is bitmap cache are used since it has to render it, then cache it. while things that are layered but don't move gain from it. Which means in terms of FFR which has few layers and many moving things, using the bitmap cache is slower then not using it.

[qqwref]

Re: FFR Suggestions

Would it be possible to not delete "used" notes, but simply move them to another array? That might make it easier to move around in a file. (Or actually... how about just using a pointer in the note array, and then incrementing the pointer rather than deleting notes? Can that be done?)

As far as the idea of clicking on a time and playing the replay from then, how about this: remove all arrows and replay hits before that frame, then essentially start playing only the part of the chart from there to the end. You would have a ~30 frame empty spot at the start before the notes start to appear, and with some clever mp3 manipulation it might be possible to get it to display on sync. I'm not a flash expert, but from your description of the arrow spawning engine it seems like it could work.

[Velocity]

Re: FFR Suggestions

Would it be possible to not delete "used" notes, but simply move them to another array? That might make it easier to move around in a file. (Or actually... how about just using a pointer in the note array, and then incrementing the pointer rather than deleting notes? Can that be done?)

As far as the idea of clicking on a time and playing the replay from then, how about this: remove all arrows and replay hits before that frame, then essentially start playing only the part of the chart from there to the end. You would have a ~30 frame empty spot at the start before the notes start to appear, and with some clever mp3 manipulation it might be possible to get it to display on sync. I'm not a flash expert, but from your description of the arrow spawning engine it seems like it could work.

The idea could always work, but the amount of code I would need to throw into it would be more then the gameplay itself. Which is why I said it was impossible.

The easiest why to make it work is kinda what you said and I don't even need to play with the mp3, I just have to go to the frame in the level swf and flash knows what to play.

[TheSaxRunner05]

Re: FFR Suggestions

Suggestion - Whore tokens less than 1 bil in a day

200,000,000 - Random new token song
500,000,000 - Random new token song
750,000,000 - Random new token song
1bil - VROFL

Edit:// Edited due to my misunderstanding, this is what I meant

[TC_Halogen]

Re: FFR Suggestions

The lag issue is not within the control of the coders of the game - remember that the game is entirely coded on Flash.

As far as removing old engines, which ones are you referring to? The one in the FFR_the_Game.php is the legacy engine, and /~velocity/(etc.) is the current engine. There are a few really old engines, like one that has no note colors (not sure if it was removed at any point), and the av-miss engine still on the site.

EDIT: -1 for Heavy/Oni score unlocks

[TheSaxRunner05]

Re: FFR Suggestions

I thought 1 bil already unlocked Oni once you posted it in that thread

[TC_Halogen]

Re: FFR Suggestions

I thought 1 bil already unlocked Oni once you posted it in that thread

1 billion in a day unlocks vROFL.

[bmah]

Re: FFR Suggestions

the heavy/oni tokens are to represent a milestone in your skill

it's not to commemorate whoring