Level 99

This has so many benefits that, while probably costing no small fortune to kick off, really gives gamers what they want. * A huge variety of games from an ever-growing catalog * Impulse-buying brand-new AND old-school games (the ID collection is a killer example) * No need to worry about scratching discs or losing a game. Just re-download it wherever whenever and keep your games organized. * Offer great deals due to cutting out the middle-man. * Keep games automatically up to date with patches. * Have a gaming community with communications and social networking-type stuff in and around the games themselves. Of course, if the system goes down or Steam goes bankrupt, then your investments might be SoL, though I can't see that happening in any way in the foreseeable future. But for indie games being offered like this, how can anyone complain? I'm not arguing the pros and cons of steam, I'm simply explaining how even indie games benefit, and thus can have a sale like this.

I'll give you time, brotha, just making sure you're aliving and kicking every once in a while.

Updated my WIP and sent it to ya, TPoM. I'm thinking of adding some slow strings and a flute (no, not an ocarina). You think you can do something with the sax, maybe light percussion that progressively becomes more elaborate as the track goes on, and maybe some synth if it's appropriate? I don't want the guitars to get drowned-out or placed in the background because that really is what I wanted to focus on, though other stuff will probably be needed to support it. Also, I couldn't think of anything after the second playthrough, should it just end there or do you want to take it somewhere else? And if this isn't where I should be leaving you comments, then you should get on AIM more and we'll talk then.

Just so you know, I am quite excited for this. Quite excited indeed.

Bought it earlier today, too good to pass up. Audiosurf + 120 gigs of music = near unlimited game potential. And I've heard great things about Braid and World of Goo and Crayon Physics and....well, just get it. Support these awesome indie game developers!

Thanks for the continuous critiques and suggestions, people. I'll be working on this as soon as I can, as a little snag as come up concerning my left hand (Doc next week should be able to get me on my way to recovery, and I'm crossing my fingers that what's wrong is what I think it is!), so I really haven't been able to update. Can anyone recommend or comment on the following: I've recently been told that, for guitar, recording in mono and hard-panning for balance and mix yields a better result than recording in stereo and trying to balance it that way (this may have been in reference to rock distorted guitars, but I'm still checking). Any comments? What would be a warm-sounding reverb to put on these guitars? Are both styles okay in this version of the writing? I didn't know if they just made it seem like two versions of the same song on three acoustic guitars glued together or if it actually had some flow stylisticly. Also, in your opinion, do either the slow or fast parts need extending or cutting?

Yes, I'm double-posting, because (as soon as my hand recovers) I wanted to know if anyone's down for a collab on Paternal Horn. I'm thinking either smooth lounge jazz (a chance for me to break away from the distorted-to-oblivion guitars and open up my approaches to style) or chirpy pop-techo-rock. Oh, and just some general updates: I've received updated WIPs from ProtoDome and HitoriJaNai, which are progressing nicely. About half the song-list has been claimed and I've personally been slowly progressing on my stuff. As things are wrapping up with a number of other projects, I'm hoping this can be kicked into gear between now and the end of Summer. Blahblahblah...

Bahaha wrong Prophet, Prophet! Y'know, I'm either just gonna call him Brad or TPoM (kinda like T-pain...great, now I wanna watch autotune the news 2 again). Yeah, I had people telling me to stick around for my Bday weekend so I can't come out for this but my undying love for Wes and BBQ should be enough to get us all through this emotional moment...

Take no offense, but the drawing style kind of reminds me of Bad Day LA, except...well, a thousand times better. The action menus look nice and I like the humor that's in there. Great great work thus far, excited for a full release.

Ah, what a wonderful, logical world we live in. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and beat my head against a wall for a few hours. It's about as good as trying to show the rational errors of rules like this to the rulemakers.

Agreed, keep me informed if I forget this ever existed.

I just think that the time, money, and other resources would be better suited towards apprehending bigger criminals, not to take this on a tangent, but yeah, I feel bad for the guy if all he was doing was modding consoles or fixing red rings. Modding is a necessary moral ambiguity which honestly pushes companies like Sony and Microsoft to improve their own methods of production, see new programming talent, and fix possible exploitation holes that could otherwise be used for other means besides modding (if there's a software hole being used for modding, you can bet someone will figure out how to use it for much more malicious purposes. I'm sure there was/will be a hole in the PS3/360's software that could allow someone to get in and steal credit card info from people's accounts when they buy more games or membership time). Sure, what I'm saying sounds like it's reaching for the purest example of modifications, and there are few people that white-knight-like who would mod. As one would say, there is a pretty well-known connection between modding and piracy. But I guess the old adage "you gotta take the good with the bad" would suffice here.

This also boils down to a number of other arguments: independent developers having a chance to break into the industry without having to sign to absurdly high-priced development kit contracts, playing import games and backups of games you have that are either in really bad shape or destroyed (I bought the NiGHTs PS2 remake and it's Japan-only, and I have a PS3 without PS2 support, so I had to get a flip-top case for my PS2 to allow NiGHTs to even work. I don't see why I'd have to invest in a whole other system to play a single game! and my original PS1 copy of ehrgeiz is in terrible shape, so I made a backup of it ages ago and use that instead of causing further wear and tear on a disc that is extremely hard to find these days and possibly doesn't even work anymore) and full hardware utilization. The online functionality of systems these days deters and prevents hacking, cheating, and piracy in a number of ways, and advanced copy protection (note how the PS3 has not yet truly been mod-broken) prevent many attempts of illegal piracy. However, there is a line that needs to be drawn between detering illegal action and crippling a system's hardware and software potentials. I'm in agreement with Rama in that "I buy it, I own it, I should have the freedom to do what I want with it" with the caveat that it does not interfere with other people's enjoyment of anything. I log onto xboxlive with a trainer giving me infinite lives and noclip, that's messing with people's enjoyment. I log on either running a backup of a game that I own already, or have unlicensed media code so that I can have subtitles in foreign AVI's running a codec that xbox didn't initially support, that should be within allowable limits. The guy that's going to jail was also probably selling pirated software on the side, or providing means to access it for the people he modded consoles for (just an assumption, but it's within reason). Simply modding a console should not merit that punishment though.

Oinkness, I have added you tentatively to the list. Everyone else, it's go time.

Oh yes, you are creepily close to me, but that's an awesome thing if you think about it. We may have to discuss a massive carpooling organization around this area seeing how many people there are/will be in the vicinity.

AF is gonna turn this into Might of Baron part 2: "a big militaristic thing with guitars and orchestra" And that's far from a bad thing. I'll be listening this week and formulating some guitar bits. We can talk about this more through PM or online, but just let me know if I should start preparing some noodling and battling.

The "for a profit" thing is where I would draw the line. Personal tinkering in order to open the possibilities and coding potential of hardware would be, in my opinion, completely okay to do. To CHARGE people money to modify their systems, especially just to play PIRATED copies of games is what the core issue is. That's a two-fold argument: to charge people money to modify their systems in order to just play pirated games. I don't believe I actually OWN a console until I've opened it's full potential. But not for piracy. Example: the XBMC program for a soft-modded xbox turns microsoft's aging last-gen console into an HD-possible (source material and tv connection depented) network media powerhouse. So instead of just letting that system die, it now has a brand new use. Maybe it's just me on this, but yeah, that's how I feel.

Hey, so I will have a WIP for mine in....sometime....soon...ish. Still trying to really formulate what I'm gonna do with it. Man, why didn't anyone tell me music is so hard...oh, wait.

I woke up this morning and had a crazy urge to play bushido blade 2.

:shock:so...I'm just kinda psychic then? AWESOME! My eyes are veritably peeled.

I have a question/request. Since OCR does host a good amount of different OSV's (or Music Data File...or whatever the hell you want to call the chiptunes from Video Games) and makes them available for download, could a torrent be created to serve out these en masse? I am trying to build up my collection so that I can have a lot of tunes available without having to a) be online or clicking every tunes link for every system and getting CTS. Hopefully this doesn't sound like a greedy request, I just would think it makes more sense bandwidth-wise, organizational-wise, and convenience-wise. Divided up between systems or not really doesn't matter to me. But if this isn't possible, or it would be too much of a hassle, let me know. Thanks always, OCR!