Know Your Hardware
Play the game enough to learn if your computer's internal speaker triggers when pressing buttons. You might have to disable certain features in Windows such as sticky keys and filter keys to get around some of those annoying notifications. Also, check to see if your keyboard registers when you press all four keys at the same time - if not, then if you try button mashing you may have some difficulty.
Evading Lag
As most other flash games do on the net or offline, lack of game processing or slower internet connections can cause lag (temporary frame skipping that makes the game either slow down, appear to glitch up, or skip parts entirely if it is really bad). The greatest cause for lag in FFR is mainly other computer processes. so having your computer set up to be "best for processing", will seriously decline chances for lag to occur. Also, playing FFR without any large programs open, like Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop, is desirable as it decreases processing for your game play and wastes it on programs you aern't currently using. Try to also not play FFR while downloading files or other things that hog up internet connection speeds. Remember, if FFR lags too much at the end of a song, your score might not even be recorded into the database (as the t-ffrstatsup and t-authenticate files might not be able to be requested or data not be able to be properly streamed to the FFR database.
Button Mashing
Button mashing is when you press the keys as fast as possible with little regard to the actual arrows. One of the most "noobish" tricks, button mashing should only be substituted for actual, thought out button combinations when the player cannot read the arrows or there are literally too many arrows to hit at once (64th streams on all four arrows, for example).
Two things to think about when mashing:
- Tapping an arrow on an empty area results in a Boo.
- If one of the arrows isn't being used, then why tap it? This applies to two and three finger button mashing.
There are three ways to button mash:
- Diagonal Stream Mash: This is where you tap your fingers in either of the diagonal methods, i.e. right up down left, over and over as fast as you can. This mash works best on thick, four arrow streams and on normal diagonal streams.
- Dual Finger Tricep Mash: Using two fingers on each hand, place them on the keys, then use your forearms to provide a rapid "vibrating" mash technique. Basically you can use the fingers together or separate, thereby providing two alternative patterns depending on what arrows you encounter (one where you're pressing four at a time, and one where you're pressing two at a time at different intervals). Alternatively you can use a three and one finger combination, however finding an applicable song may be difficult. This will probably wear out your upper arms fairly quickly, so you might have to build endurance.
- General Mash: Hit the keys however you feel like. Pound the keyboard with your fist, use a hammer, or maybe have a friend help!