Liontamer

I definitely agree on the WIP and Compo areas getting the additional attention they need. As for the torrents, I wouldn't die with a top-level link on the tabs or whatever, but I've just gotta keep saying that even if deemed clunky (I disagreed), those torrent downloads will suffer if the list isn't given, in full, on the main page. And it'll be a permanent effect. While I understand general ebb and flow, VotL is now down to 47 leechers. And again, that's down from a very steady mid-to-high 70s right up to the day the torrent listings were taken down. I don't know the exact dropoff for the OCR00001-1000 torrent, but that's the 2nd most popular one, and it's definitely down as well. In the long run, no front page torrent listings just needlessly hurts our reach. If you're starting to lean that way, Dave, toward putting them back up, I'm definitely with that. I don't mind that they got pulled down in the first place. At the very least, it was educational to see the effect this had on the most popular torrents.

Back when the torrents were on the front page, the amount of leechers for Voices of the Lifestream was always in the middle-to-high 70s. For months since the release, that number has been very steady including the day of the removals of the torrents from the front page. If aubrey has those kind of stats available to him, I'm sure he'd verify that. Days later, now the amount of leechers is at 51. And I think it'll keep going down at least a bit more. Let that play out over time, and the amount of people that would have been downloading the album via the torrents but now won't will get bigger. Potentially losing 20 album downloads every few days is just a bad tradeoff. I'm of the conviction that once something is not directly available on a website's main page the relative visibility markedly decreases. No matter what is it, if it's not directly accessible from the main page, it will be more difficult for the average user to discover. Even a big link to the torrents page is markedly less effective than putting the full list right there in plain sight. I thought the torrent listing looked impressive rather than clunky, as it pretty much encapsulates all of OCR's music in one comparatively small block, and also broke up the relative monotony of orange links. It's tough. I understand we want to give more visibility to the Compo and WIP threads, and it's difficult to not feel like there's too much going on with what's being displayed. I'm not even saying let's get rid of those additions to the front page. But we've got a lot of content delivered with those torrents at a lower cost with better ease of use, and I think it would be unfortunate to inadvertently diminish their positive impact.

What's so criminal about a fadeout? You've all graduated from the Protricity school of music!

Front page or die.

If I had 20 minutes left before the submission deadline, I'd fade out too. Like a good UnModder.

OH SHOOT, Audix got Treasure Master! Dear God, Greg, please lock that one in, I know you'd do a good job.

I've done the best I can with some games, extrapolating quasi-official titles based on stage names, thanks to game manuals and speedruns. Almost anything that's not filled in is because the game had no official soundtrack release, and thus no official names for the songs in the soundtrack. We'll do something with unofficial titles in the future to fill in the gaps, and also designate between official and unofficial titles, even if it's only something I can see.

I approve this message.

It was for reason of I had jazzed it up, hardman style.

Aye. Yeah, when I noticed they were gone, I was decidedly against it. To me, those are our bread and butter. If torrent DLs drop off, it certainly hurts the spread of the music. To be fair, so far torrent DLs don't seem to have slowed down, but I'm a big proponent of people being able to find the torrents with minimal effort. djp'll give his point of view, I'm sure.

Pretty often. Then again, most of them aren't OC ReMixes until they're posted, so I'll change my answer to almost never.

I currently work at a bookstore, but I'm trying to move into radio, music production or any other sort of audio development role due to my love of music and knowing so many artists. Nothing would be better to me than being in a position where I could lift up great musicians in the game arrangement community. For me, OCR is a hobby, but that's only because it doesn't pay anything. Besides djpretzel, I likely spend the most time working on the site. It's Protricity's fault. Dunno how he feels about it nowadays, but he quickly regretted it. Well, Israfel (lack of interest) and Harmony (lack of time) already explained their situations. Shnabubula's removal from the panel, I don't mind talking about at all, but it would take way too long to explain. That's a good idea for an extremely lengthy blog post though. His theory-centric judgments were a very small part of it. In short though, there's definitely no hard feelings though; Sam and I definitely get along great now, and it was great meeting him at MAGFest and shooting the shit, including his take on what went wrong with his time on the panel, which was all very interesting. Anyway, I'll blog about it someday. If a vote is not unanimous, the vote is extended. Not that it's written down as a law, but generally any disputed vote with a gap of 3 if favor of one side is resolved (e.g. NO will result from 1Y/4N, 2Y/5N, 3Y/6N; YES from 4Y/1N, 5Y/2N, 6Y/3N). The Judges Decisions forum shows the decisions publicly. We have a private Queue forum where we vote and discuss the tracks in their respective thread. Anything resolved is later moved to Judges Decisions. DragonAvenger is not a judge, so clearly she doesn't get it. But nah, she's got the gist of it, and BGC explained it as well. If something is ever placed on the judges panel and it turns out to be a clear submissions standards violation (e.g. MIDI ripped), then a judge can give a NO Override. That ends the vote without requiring every judge to weigh in, which would be redundant. If you're scoping out this personal as a potential significant other, then ask them out on a date. Dates are the proper way of getting to know someone better; anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about. Propose a date (tips and rationale on getting a date are here). Then let the person dominate the conversation. That's how you learn more about someone; give them the floor and let them talk about themself. I don't recall trying to BS that I quit. I just liked the comic, so I added it to the Judging Process updates thread. If the site's still around and I still have the energy and interest in judging, I'll be around. Even if I was no longer a judge or staff member, I'd still check out the music. I'd be different in that any music career wouldn't be as a musician, but I'd try to make time for the site; it's been lots of fun, so I'd rather not give it up. That being said, getting a solid career-oriented job in the games/music industry is tough to balance with OC ReMix. The Wingless was always kind of low in terms of voting frequency, but when he joined Midway, he definitely didn't have time any longer to do the job even if he wanted to. For ReMixers, I usually know their names and faces and a little bit of background on them already. So for me I can meet someone in person for the first time at MAGFest like OA and just naturally have conversation. For me, it's slightly more difficult to meet people who aren't ReMixers, and learn about some of them from scratch. But meetups make it so easy to get to know non-ReMixers in the community on a more personal level than the internet, so I always like meeting people like Jiggles McPuff (Don), Moguta (Chris), q-pa (Jon), Arrowned (Jarel), Vilecat (Val), etc. For me, any internet drama at the forums is basically non sequitur to a meetup. People tend not to act the same way in person. So, no, encountering the best/worst of some people beforehand doesn't affect wanting to meet someone for a meetup. I always love the meetups. Being on staff doesn't change how I feel about attending. I'm always just glad to shoot the shit with people who love game music. No worries, you definitely listed everything I remember, and I also forgot that Noir got a guest vote. That mix by Rexy that was definitely another track where I didn't understand why it wasn't resubbed, because it was definitely near the line. We should definitely bring the guest judging thing back every once in a while. I always enjoyed the opinions brought out by those. Being technical, the number of subs isn't steadily increasing. It was about 1.5 subs per day, but as of 2008, it, for whatever reason, jumped to about 3 subs per day. So far, the overall proportion of at least decent material has also increased, so the panel is getting more work. To answer the questions: 1. The panel simply needs to get back in the groove of voting. 2. No. 3. No. There's no reason to limit submissions. Though it might sound like I want fewer subs due to the workload, I would always be happy if we got more. That's always a cool thing for OCR. 4. zircon had a great WIP critique checklist of sorts that he drafted for the Works board, but we haven't put that out yet. I'm not sure why we didn't; I thought it was great, personally. It was for reason of I had jazzed it up, hardman style.

Just my opinion, but... If Ben Croshaw made the game, he's notable enough to me, thereby it's notable enough to me. That it was released a couple of months ago is fine. The music being arranged HAS to be music originally created for the game. If it's not, then it's not a viable source tune for an OC ReMix.

If you ever need some interviews regarding OC ReMix, lemme know. I lovez me some radio.

Nobuo Uematsu's gonna get Andy's copy. Naturally.

I really thought the 3rd place finisher, "Lost Odyssey Medley - 1000 Years" by Ting Si Hao was gonna take it. Congrats to Andy and Kenley on their strong finishes! Andy, you better figure out a way to get to Chicago, foo! Beg for $.

Chiming in that I like the 4 image limit.

It's been at http://duck.thasauce.net/ for a while.

Wow, I never commented on this? Shit, I really thought I did. This was such a big favorite of mine in my olden days in '02. monkofevil's comment that this arrangement actually works better in a C&C environment than the original was something I realized as soon as I first listened to it. Really solid, chill material from Scott, it's a classic.

Well, I pretty much am the secretary. I don't really see anyone else stepping up to handle the need. I'd love for somebody to, but due to maintaining the inbox, it's basically most convenient in the big picture that I handle it. Interesting question. In short, yes. People are gonna point at that and be like "YOU SEE, they want people to make the arrangement unrecognizable and shit!" It's not really that cut-and-dry. The more creative/unique/interpretive the arrangement is, while not losing site of the original, the more I probably like it as a judge. I've never looked at one aspect of arrangement like "Oh shit, he went from 4/4 to 13/8"; it doesn't trigger like that. Besides changing things, you have to actually pull off the changes well. But I will admit, I really do like the eclectic ReMixers we have, like Shnabubula, ktriton, and AeroZ. Slap their name on it, and I've gotta hear it. We've had a lot worse than a n00b like you. Don't worry, you're nothing to me, so my decision wouldn't be affected. Only Shnabubula used font colors regularly when judging. There's no max limit of judges, though I don't see us ever going higher than 12. There's no requirement for an odd number of Js; djp can break a tie (e.g. 6Y/6N) or virtual tie (e.g. 6Y/5N) regardless of the number of judges. Not a musician, but in terms of working with n00bs, lack of time generally means we don't have time to do loads of 1-on-1 help with people.

Yeah, I'm thinking more along the lines something that generally explains the next step in the waiting game for YESs, and very basic things about the reasoning for NOs, with links to read re: the standards, and also the ReMixing and Works forums. Then the only thing for the NO ones would be pasting in the Decision link. But there would have to be an general explanation of the judging process in the mail, it could just be "Hey, we finished your decision; the link is here." Differentiating a letter between NOs and NO-resubmits might be a little dicey, but we'll mull it over.

I would love to do that, and I've definitely thought about that, but have so much on my plate and have been content enough with our current system that I haven't taken the time to move an idea like this forward. Keeping mixers in the loop is one aspect where our system really has no plan other than "they should follow the site", which is definitely not conducive to getting new people to become community regulars. Admittedly, it has worked for us so far, and honestly, it would continue to as is, because enough people become regulars. But contacting people regarding acceptances and rejections would be great. That would also be yet another thing I'd have to be personally responsible for, since I maintain the inbox. IF we developed a form letter for notifying artists about acceptances and rejections, I would love to start doing that. I feel that kind of contact/updating is something that would only benefit the site, even though we'd have our share of complainers who would resent bad news.

I did have a list that the judges could view, but they don't really care too much about the DPs, or at least no one has told me, so I don't maintain it anymore. That being said, anything I flag for DP is on the judges FTP, so they can check out anything any time. Yeah I suppose de facto, I'm now single-handedly responsible for DPs. So really when it says "Evaluated by: djpretzel", it should be saying "Evaluated by: Liontamer". I've never had djp or the judges complain about what gets DPed. The judges, that could be an issue of them simply not listening to the DPs when they're posted, because maybe someone would have an issue, but I've never heard of one yet. Dave clearly hears everything, at least before doing the writeups, and I've never had him complain either. I'd argue that my DP bar is higher than djp's, but I don't think he would take offense, because he's said before on VGF #50 that he feels the site's gotten better since the panel got more influence on song selection, because they have higher collective standards. When I flag something for DP, I pretty much make sure, to the best that I can, that it's cut-and-dry YES quality.

Just following up on the original post, the identity/whereabouts of GrayLightning are the only conspiracy theory I can think of in the community. I'm not sure what other topics are out there that, without merely ROFLing and making stuff up, are actually mysterious.

Scores are due tomorrow, so sometime VERY sooner after the 16th, I gather. I've still got 10 more to score, and am working diligently. I took Valentine's Day off.