What's on your mind?

[greenraven]

Thanks for the adds, I'll add you two back. :D

[DerVVulfman]

*DerVV uses his patented twin-catfish doubleslap attack on PK8 ... for doubleposting! *

um.....
And for some time, I have been thinking about in-game music and how some people are eithe writing music for games or are using existing music. And some pieces that I have heard, either composed or used, have been pieces that I call game fail pieces. That is, they have music that doesn't truly fit for a game score.

Yep, I've been thinking seriously in regards of the ReGaL project and any would-be composers. Oh, hey Rosy! This is not a Rosy critique. But being a composer, you may appreciate my observations.

In professional games, I hear pieces that fall under two categories: cutscene emotional music and steady stream music. The former is probably the easier to compose as the artist can make music build and give a palpable tension or romantic heartthrob to a scene. However, the latter may be harder as it needs to actually loop.

Steady stream music, as you can hear within games such as Final Fantasy, Oni, Doom, Suikoden II, are pieces of music for an ongoing event, map or game stage that will continue to repeat until the game stage is over. These pieces, as they repeat, always keep a steady rhythm and tension. An action piece within Doom will be a kinetic and fastpased horror piece without any pause or change in tempo. Likewise, walking through the Honeybee Manor in Final Fantasy VII will afford the player a comically light selection that never rises or lowers. Oni has a techno beat that is always fast paced and has a persistant life except the music for the cutscenes. And The Chase from Suikoden II is no less fast paced, though a solely done with violins, fast pased drum beats, harmonized trumpets and japanese flutes. And again, there are no highs or lows throughout as it keeps the same energy throughout the piece.

Just listen to these pieces (courtesy of VGMusic, DoomWorld and Youtube) and you'll hear how they always stay balanced through their respective pieces:

Final Fantasy VII - Honeybee Manor
Suikoden II - The Chase (though VGmusic has it as Luka Battle)
DOOM II - Map 1
The Lost Vikings - Candyland

Oni - Konoko Chase

[video=Youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guuJJrhAMCo[/video]

Another thing... choirs. I hardly hear actual singing in game music, though it's becoming a bit more common place. Perhaps we can blame a little known LucasArts game called Full Throttle for that. Their opening credits was actually hard rock for a game where you played a biker. But it's becoming more prominent as one can easily hear it in games by Squaresoft and ... um... whoever made Suikoden II. :P But be wary. Choirs and singing should be used sparingly and for the more intense or climactic scenes of a game. Avoid anything with recognizable lyrics unless it is a cutscene as hearing the vocals repeat from one stanza to another and back can possibly kill the illusion. Actual lyrics may work best only for beginning and ending credits and custom cutscenes.

[Taylor]

I was going to say that my current selection of pieces for my project betray this reasoning, but listening through them, it seems they follow similar rules.

There's definite "high" and "low" points in some of the looping non-scene tracks, but they maintain the same tempo and don't change their entire mood. There's probably a more accurate term for this (verse and chorus? except these are pieces so, uh) and what I'm thinking about doesn't necessarily break any "steady stream".

[DerVVulfman]

Yuck. All my regularly scheduled days off went *Poof!*

One of my fellow employees got jury duty, so the work schedule got re-arranged. Now it's not that she got Jury duty that is bothersome (or at least it wasn't that bad to me), but another employee DIDN'T like having a change in his world... so he up and QUIT? SERIOUSLY? YOU QUIT BECAUSE SOMEONE GETS JURY DUTY!?

So, I'm gonna have less actual time to work on some things for a while.

[Bounty Hunter Lani]

I had an amazingly insane day today!
It was actually pretty fun 

First, I went to get my picture ID, and found out I didn't have all of the requirements with me, and the governor more than doubled the money it takes to get the ID, so I had to be driven all the way back home empty-handed.
Okay, right?

Well, on the way home, the car broke down, so we had to wait for a tow truck for 3.5 hours! I got sunburn from that waiting. 


Then, after we got towed, I had to walk 2 miles back home because there was no transportation to take me back!
So I walked and walked... and I took another shower when I got home, because 3.5 hours in the sun doesn't make you smell very nice 

Afterwards, I found out I had to go check the mail as soon as I got home.
No problem, right?

WELLLLL, I had to walk down to the store right after that. It's a mile away, one way. So I walked down to the store, got some food stuff, and some necessities for the house... and my cash card got declined! So I had to go all the way back home and get the last of my saved cash, and walk all the way back there again!
Nothing could go wrong with that, right?

WELL THIS ISN'T A FAIRY TALE, BUB!

You see, when I got back, they had JUST closed the store (Literally 20 seconds before I got there), and I had to wait 5 minutes more for them to open the place back up so I could get the household necessities... And then I had to walk all the way back home again. 

I don't regret a single moment of my day, though. Patience has been something I've been working on, and today proved that I got it 

I don't think I could've spent my day any more productive anyway 

[yamina-chan]

The world can sometimes be a strange and small place...Especially on the internet.

One of my favourite games is Final Fantasy IX.
One of my favourite characters of that game is Kuja.
On of my favourite Kuja Fanarts was posted on Devantart a few years ago.
Looking back at the signature and the account itself of the artist now, I realized it was created by someone whose work I have come to grately respect as of late for creating what has quickly become an other of my favourite games.

...
I knew I had heard the name and seem the avatar/icon somewhere before when I started playing the game but I did not make the connection to somewhing which I had seen years ago. And certainly not with that context.

[Ahzoh]

The Great Vowel Shift that occurred in English between 1350 and 1700 is responsible for why we don't pronounce "time" like "teem", "see" like "say", "louse" like "loose", "beast" like "best", and "moon" like "moan"... also, "cut" could have rhymed with modern-day "foot"

Also since during this time spelling is being standardized, it explains our crazy spelling.

[JayRay]

I had an amazingly insane day today!
It was actually pretty fun 

First, I went to get my picture ID, and found out I didn't have all of the requirements with me, and the governor more than doubled the money it takes to get the ID, so I had to be driven all the way back home empty-handed.
Okay, right?

Well, on the way home, the car broke down, so we had to wait for a tow truck for 3.5 hours! I got sunburn from that waiting. 


Then, after we got towed, I had to walk 2 miles back home because there was no transportation to take me back!
So I walked and walked... and I took another shower when I got home, because 3.5 hours in the sun doesn't make you smell very nice 

Afterwards, I found out I had to go check the mail as soon as I got home.
No problem, right?

WELLLLL, I had to walk down to the store right after that. It's a mile away, one way. So I walked down to the store, got some food stuff, and some necessities for the house... and my cash card got declined! So I had to go all the way back home and get the last of my saved cash, and walk all the way back there again!
Nothing could go wrong with that, right?

WELL THIS ISN'T A FAIRY TALE, BUB!

You see, when I got back, they had JUST closed the store (Literally 20 seconds before I got there), and I had to wait 5 minutes more for them to open the place back up so I could get the household necessities... And then I had to walk all the way back home again. 

I don't regret a single moment of my day, though. Patience has been something I've been working on, and today proved that I got it 

I don't think I could've spent my day any more productive anyway 

Here's my take on that, I call it the "angels blocking my enemy " = sometimes it helps to think about the issue because let me tell you a personal testimony, this happened to me...

We were trying to get new tag stickers for the car, and I got off work just right on time, thought "Great, I'll get there, got my money, got everything for those tags, going to go right to the tag agency and... "

sat at the stop light for an extra 5 minutes, a funeral group was going by.. Then, of course the road I wanted to use to get to the freeway, has a railroad crossing on it, so waited another 10 minutes, no problem right? well, everyone ELSE who wanted to go from point A to point B decided they wanted to get off work at the same time i did, so traffic jam to the on-ramp of the freeway, so had to wait for that, then getting ON the freeway, sailing good for about 3 exits, and BAM, another traffic jam.... I knew I was going to be late, but I figured maybe if I slid across antoher street instead, I could make it, took the exit ramp, and well...

Had to stop and wait on the side of the road, not able to get to the tag agency, waiting for the police cars, ambulances, and eventually a fire truck, who was rushing to the scene of a bad accident, RIGHT outside the tag agency I was scheduled to be in 20 minutes earlier.

Now, if someone hadn't "Guarded against the ENEMY" he would have got me there right as that wreck was happening, possibly with me being the star attraction, but as it happened, I instead got to go home, and come back the next day.

Your car breaking down could easily have been a 'stopped car to avoid accident' issue. Walking home could have kept you from being in a car with someone who could have caused harm to you, and you never know, if you had stayed at the store right then, you could have been robbed, or lost your cash card at the register.

[Taylor]

"louse" like "loose",

We don't pronounce those the same? Out of instinct those read the same to me. I don't know if that's accurate to my accent, or I'm just doing it wrong.

Speaking of English vs US things, I bought a Steam game and was amused by the Tax being $0.00 at the "checkout" screen. America? This is what you should be doing. Even when in NZ our prices for games might suck sometimes, (as well as other software made by certain companies) at least the prices don't suddenly go up at the counter.

(To clarify: tax/GST is in the advertised/labelled price.)

[Ahzoh]

"louse" like "loose",

We don't pronounce those the same? Out of instinct those read the same to me. I don't know if that's accurate to my accent, or I'm just doing it wrong.

Do you pronounce "house" like it'd rhyme with "loose"?

The Great Vowel Shift wasn't the only series of sound changes in English that had occurred, so there is that.