BardicKnowledge

I agree -- the only reason he was playable at all was because his arrows had a cheating hitbox. Is it his arrows or the player shoulders that got fixed, incidentally? Either fix would screw him. His ult is solid, but he is simply not reliable for anything else compared to the others.

I haven't played MZM in a while, but this sounds like a pretty good reason to revisit it. I'll let you know what I think later this week

I don't think Widow is OP honestly. Any sniper that can't kill in a single headshot is a sniper that isn't powerful. It's especially bad that she can't one-shot Bastion from the front when he's in turret mode (note: this isn't me asking for a change to the character). Lately I find myself playing a lot more McCree at range and saving Widow as a counter character to punish 2x support (especially Zenyatta), Pharah, or the rare turret placement where Widow can hit it without triggering the turret's response. Also, I think that McCree and Soldier 76 both do a better job of replacing her on a team than Hanzo does, but that could be because I am inconsistent with the bow and arrow. One exception: I really like Widow on a couple of the Ilios stages where she has amazing perches.

I'm curious to know how many people played through the Plague Knight campaign. I personally thought it was absolutely fantastic -- far better than any other similar effort in say, the Castlevania titles -- and now I can't wait for the rest of the expansions. Triple jumping is the best, by the way. I need to track down the new speedruns and see just how much the times improve.

Fun interview! I'd never thought about labelling a keyboard with hex notation, but that's a really smart decision to help ease the conversion from musical understanding to code.

I am not actually the right person to do this -- at least not without informing the people who own ludomusicology.org. I know them well though and will reach out today -- that's a good idea. Edit: This is now in process over at the Ludomusicology Facebook group. Everyone thinks it's a good idea, but I'm not sure any of us has experience as a Wikipedia editor...

The academic community would love official sheet music scores for more games. It's a very tiny market though, haha. As others have pointed out, however, without the scores coming directly from the official data, a transcription is ultimately going to be subjective -- and therefore, not really desirable. As someone who just finished doing a bunch of transcriptions for his dissertation, let me caution that many fan MIDIs are awful, and will actually hinder rather than help if you use them as a starting point. Not saying they're all bad, but there is value in having a good enough ear to tell the difference, or to straight up do your own transcription work.

Edit 6/10 I can officially announce the presenters and their paper subjects, so here they are! Tekla Babyak (Cornell University) -- Music, Card Games, and the Play of Sensation: Kant’s Ludomusical Aesthetics Karen Cook (University of Hartford): Video Games and Chant (specific title TBD) Steve Reale (Youngstown State University): Glass Beads and Graphic Analysis: A Ludist Account of Contemporary Music Theory Carmel Raz (Columbia University): Anne Young’s “Musical Games” (1801): Music Theory, Gender, and Game Design Kirsten Carithers (Northwestern University): Not Just Fun and Games: Musical Indeterminacy as User-Generated Content I am especially excited for Karen Cook's chant paper -- I love liturgy, and I love when chant is utilized in games, the most popular example being the Kyrie in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood's (and SOTN, and others) menu screen that casts Dracula as the Antichrist. All of them should be great though! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've looked through all of the abstracts now, and we are going to have an awesome event in Vancouver. I'll share more once the other committee members have voted and we have official results...

Note: I post these here largely for people's information, so that folks can see how the academy does business. That being said, if you have a submission, we'd love to hear from you! I am on the program committee for this, so this isn't just me passing along other people's stuff -- this is what I do, alongside my own research and (hopefully soon) teaching. ----------- Call for PapersLudomusicology Study Group of the American Musicological SocietyAMS Vancouver, 3-6 November 2016 Submission Deadline: April 25, 2016.The new AMS Ludomusicology Study Group will host a session at AMS/SMT Vancouver 2016. This year, we welcome abstracts (250 words max) for 20-minute presentations on any aspect of ludomusicology within or beyond digital games. All AMS members, regardless of familiarity with (or previous research of) video games, are welcome to submit and assist us in broadening the scope of ludomusicology. Critical inquiries might include:- What makes play musical, and music playful?- How do the meanings and stakes of performances, choreographies, bodies, and screens play out via sounds and other sensations?- What is ludomusicology anyway, and how can it interface with current ideas in music theory, ethnomusicology, music education, and music therapy?Please send submissions (as Word docs) to gamemusicstudies -at- gmail.com by April 25, 2016. Do not include your name/identifying information in the submission itself. The program committee will send out decisions by May 10, 2016.

^Ono is the world's absolute best Internet troll. The dude could give lessons, haha. On the video: quit complaining -- Bison didn't have the psycho crusher throughout most of Alpha, for instance. That dude is salty af -- he could power ScrubQuotes for a year alone.

I need to edit my own highlight reel now, haha. Good stuff!

Hit me up on either Skype (bardic_knowledge) or Steam (bardicknowledge) chat to make sure I'm online -- the SFV online status is a joke.

Be an annoying bastard, that's how. His LP spinning attack is safe on block and doesn't look like it, so you can bait out lots of replies that will allow for full counters after you block.

Think of the V-Skill and V-Trigger as a different special move for each character bound to a separate input, not necessarily as separate mechanics. In Super Turbo Cammy can backfist as much as she likes; in SFV Cammy can backfist as much as she likes. The only exception to this is V-Trigger cancelling mid-combo, which is a single roman cancel you get essentially once per round. And you have a nice, long window to pull it off, honestly. Everyone is right about short combos -- most are less than five inputs, even the absolute best ones. On Nash, just practice cr. mp --> stand mp --> Flash Kick. It's an easy link and is close to max possible damage for a punish atm.

I'm RTBardic on SFV -- add me! I am loving the game thus far, playing mainly Laura.

I just use nice stereo cans (the ultra-comfy AKG-K240s here) and let drivers / software do all the rest of the work. I can diifferentiate between "in front" and "behind" readily enough with them if the game is mixed properly.

How is Howard Drossin -- who visited MAGFest (7?) as a Sonic 3 composer -- credited on the soundtrack? I remember nothing about him except his completely milktoast reaction to GeoffreyTaucer's killer Lava Reef arrangement. One immediately notices that his name is not listed among the songwriting ranks of "Brad Buxer, Bobby Brooks, Doug Grigsby III, Darryl Ross, Geoff Grace, and Cirocco Jones" that the blog cites. Seems that until we find a way to parse who worked on what specifically, our work will not yet be done...I really wish there were a master list of what Drossin did vs. the people working for MJ. I've always loved this story, as an aside -- one of the coolest musicology investigations the scene will likely ever see.

Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, and other games focused around tight action games definitely emphasize the gameplay end of the spectrum over the art design, music, and other aesthetic elements (note: I'm not saying that those elements are not also spectacular in either case). As Nabeel said about film, there's a special award for cinematography -- that is, the best camera work, and the best elements unique to film. Why not just solve this question with a special award at GCDA for best game design? We all agree that game design is some part of what makes video games a unique medium...

I enjoyed the video, but I have something to counter your first proposal. For instance, when you say that in a looping track the end "should be relatively similar to the beginning," what exactly does that mean? Why not end your looping track on a half cadence leading back into tonic, which would make the end quite different from the beginning? I suggest that loops should instead "lead back to the beginning" -- in what fashion that relationship occurs is up to the composer. See the Super Mario Bros. World 8 map screen for a quick and dirty example of this. It's a series of chords that leads back to tonic, but it does not arrive there until the beginning of the loop. Putting a tonic chord followed by the same tonic chord would serve to highlight the repetition, the very thing you want to avoid. As for reverb trails and not exporting to MP3, that is good advice for a person just getting started with this -- keep it up!

I don't know why anyone accepted AngelCityOutlaw's proposal that games can be reduced to a sequence of rules when the same can be said about nearly anything. Before engaging in a discussion of the word "art," let's first have a brief chat about the word "virtuosity." From William Cheng's recent book, "Sound Play": "Inherent in creative and critical play is an element of virtuosity, which, as defined by Dana Gooley (regarding the legendary pianist Franz Liszt), involves exceeding 'the limit of what seems possible, or what the spectator can imagine...[and] insistently mobilizing, destabilizing, and reconstituting borders.' Insistence is key: maintaining virtuosic distinction means staying a couple steps ahead of the game. Should extraordinary acts catch on and become heavily imitated, the could cease to appear extraordinary as such. ...To be sure, it is possible for an act to be so radical that it comes off as more alienating than impressive. Chess players who set fire to the game board during a match are clearly transgressors (and maybe dangers to society), but they aren't likely to be hailed as creative or virtuosic chess masters. It would likewise be odd to spread peanut butter on a piano's keys during a recital, but performers who do so shouldn't count on being venerated as concert pianists in the conventional sense." The last paragraph seems comical but is vital to this discussion -- every performative act in couched in a set of understood rules. This is true of music, and it is true of games. Batman can't leave Gotham on the bus at the beginning of Arkham Knight, and you can't paint peanut butter on the piano if you want to be a pianist. Boiling down either music or games (or any other performative act, seriously) to "the rules" without addressing the myriad range of other elements that make up performance is to miss the point completely, which seems to be the most of what this potentially useful thread has degenerated into. As to the original point raised by Nabeel -- I think that art-games (that is, what you have uncharitably labelled as walking simulators and such) are vital to the maturation of the medium, but don't necessarily speak for the whole. Because my argument applies to all media, let's step away from games and do this in film instead -- just because Crash and Doubt exist doesn't mean we quit talking about how awesome Indiana Jones is, or why Spielberg is a stellar director. One is not better than the other, they merely represent multiple expressions within the same medium. Some movies have great action sequences, some really get to us emotionally, and some make us think and feel clever for piecing things together. Games are exactly the same way -- they allow for multiple modes of presentation within a given constraint of starting rules (you generally don't leave the movie theater if you want to "watch" a film, you generally don't put down the controller for extended periods of time if you want to "play" the game) for experiencing what the medium has to offer on any given day.

I once attended a paper arguing for an understanding of Proteus as a 20th-century aleatoric composition that takes in video game inputs to determine what pitches are played (based on interactions with trees, critters, etc.) I own it already but wanted to let people know that if you're into as much randomization as possible, that pushes the boundaries neatly.

I bought all digital presents for my person, fwiw -- so international folks should feel more than welcome to participate!

Let me know how the remastered Darksiders II is -- I have the original game and used my coupon to get you the remaster. I'm wondering if it's worth picking up when it inevitably goes on sale later this year.

The community here has been an amazing, important part of my life for some time. Just a few highlights quickly: Jill Aversa making the wedding presents for my groomsmen on short notice when my earlier plans fell through. Most of them still have that album in their car. OA and Moonlapse (with Deia soon thereafter) making me feel welcome in the Twin Cities. Next time I'm in town, we are all going to the Surly brewery rain or shine. Singing for the FFVI album with Andrew is the best deal I've ever made in my life -- I provide vocals, he provided vodka. Throwing down with my fellow OCR Street Fighter players continues to be a gaming highlight for me, and I fully expect all of you (you know who you are) to be on for SFV when it launches. This list wouldn't be complete without special thank yous to Stevo and Wes, who both go out of their way to make everybody -- my family included -- feel extra welcome. I imagine that I am not the only one with similar thoughts about these two amazing dudes. Lastly, prophetik and Addie working together to throw me a surprise birthday party at MAGFest was the best thing ever. That cake was amazing as well.

Well, I am blown away by the gift that I received. Wes really doesn't want me to finish my dissertation, haha. In all seriousness, this is very humbling and I don't know how best to express how thankful I am except to say thank you. This unboxing pic of me looking way more excited than I usually do (I intended just a very pleased smile, I confess) comes via a joke by Addie, who took the picture right after she said "Now look like I didn't schedule you a vasectomy for Christmas," causing me to laugh really hard and create an embarrassing picture of myself for everyone's enjoyment. As an aside, I have a large pile of digital goodies for my own person, but they haven't accepted my Steam friend request. If they don't respond by the end of the day I'm just going to spoil the surprise and PM them since I should not be sitting on gifts after receiving my own.