Level 99

Are you a talented visual artist looking for a way to express your love for OCR? Well, there's good news for you! We have just the opportunity you're looking for! As many of you know, OCR attends many Video Game-related functions and events, such as conventions and music festivals. When we go to these events, we normally sell merchandise and bundle album physicals to make every purchase feel special. And recently, we've come up with an exclusive physical album that will only be handed out in person. It's called A Taste of OCR, and we're starting with Volume 1. The tracklist features a smattering of some of OCR's most diverse songs, showcasing the high level of musical professionalism across a range of games, systems, genres, and musical styles. We're looking for an artist to take care of the front cover art, the back cover tracklist, and the disc art. The contest entries will consist of ONLY the front cover art. If your entry wins, you'll be asked to do the other two pieces as well. Staff is currently on a bit of a time crunch since we want to get these ordered and ready before the beginning of next year, so the time line will be a bit tight. Here are the rules for entry: 1) One entry per person. 2) Image should be standard cd cover dimensions (1500x1500 px, 300dpi PNG is a good start. If you need reference dimensions, contact me). Please retain any art you make in the native project format, such as PSD, PDN, GMP, etc so that any potential changes can be made if your entry wins but needs some minor tweaks. 3) The cover should NOT contain any ripped game art or sprites. The artwork shoul be wholly original, except for potentially the use of the OCR logo and title. The OCR title is Iomanoid if you were wondering. You CAN draw original artwork of existing properties, like Mario, Samus, Kirby, Solid Snake, Sonic, Mega Man, etc etc, but don't use pre-existing art. 4) The cover should include the album title "A Taste of OCR: Volume One" on it. 5) All entries need to be in by 11:59 PM EST October 11th, 2013. 6) The winner will be selected by majority vote of OCR Staff within three days of all entries being collected. The winner will then be announced and contacted for the additional artwork information. You may hotlink, embed, or upload your file however you wish. Please post entries in this thread for consideration, regardless. If you have any questions, let me know. Good luck and looking forward to what y'all can come up with!

Will do tonight! HARSH! But okay man Much love to my packing brotha.

I have been working with someone behind the scenes to come up with a unique and intriguing concept of this album, and will hopefully open up "public recruitment" soon. It's definitely not what I originally had in mind, but thus far the idea's morphed into something kickass. As of now, Gunstar and Sunset Riders were removed from the list so you're run n gun point was a valid one. I'll link here once the thread is made. Also fuck yeah Sin and Punishment. It's amazing how this "fringe genre" has some of the best music VGM has to offer. Batsugun caught my ear when I was going through all the Saturn games I never got a chance to play. Definitely what I consider the original bullet hell shmup, and the FM music is just divine. Again, I won't comment too much on whats in and whats out or how its going to be done until planning is finalized In the meantime, .

Listening party is totally fine, Dave. Go do your thing. All I ask is that a download link for the music, or any mp3 version of the show its on, not be made available until AFTER the album comes out. That sound kosher?

Current List: U.N. Squadron Space Megaforce/Super Aleste M.U.S.H.A Axelay Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer Sol Feace/Sol Deace Gradius Raiden Gunbird/Gunbird 2 Ikaruga Radiant Silvergun Gunstar Heroes Sunset Riders Phalanx Tiny Phalanx Batsugun Iridion 3d/2 Space Harrier That a good enough list for ya? Hell, I might as well post a recruit thread and just recruit a fucking director at this point as well.

Me and a couple of bros have been tossing around the idea of doing an all-star SHMUP album, since one single SHMUP would be quite unlikely to get support for a whole album alone. Pretty sure it will be planned and opened sometime in the future, near or far, but the current list I have includes UN Squadron amongst the choices. The album concept is tentatively called SHMUP YOURS. I know it seems like a far flung thing, but hey, at least its SOMETHING that could potentially develop

I believe that "Is this your first project" stuff is already in the Project Guidelines

First, let me preface this and say removing it is not my call in the least. I'm just speaking my mind here, trying to show you some arguments against what you're asking, both from a community listener's perspective and the perspective of a staff member who's been diligent in trying to be fair and equal in molding the current album eval/posting process over the last 3 years. I've looked and looked and I can't find an instance where a track was removed and replaced, only removed. And I can't remember any instances where any albums had tracks removed OR replaced once released, for any reason. I completely disagree about torrenting as a) it saves the site bandwidth costs, allows for efficient sharing of lossless files and large file sized extras, like the trailers, to be included, and c) provides an alternative to http/ftp downloads for people who may be limited in their website access. The average internet connection speed may be increasing but not at as large a rate as most people think. The average US connection speed is less than 5 Mbit/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_United_States#Access_speed), with many people still holding on to their dial up speeds due to the economy, broadband access in remote areas, satellite access coverage, and other such issues. Be that as it may, saying torrenting doesn't make sense is a bit backwards even with average internet speed taken into account. Torrenting became popular BECAUSE the average internet speed was increasing, allowing people with unlimited broadband to high-speed peer share files as opposed to taking away from a site's potentially limited bandwidth costs (servers cost a lot of money if you do a LOT of bandwidth, pending you don't cripple the servers first) and allowing for more efficient and effective sharing of files. As of this day, we do include zip files on the websites for downloading, but only of the mp3 package without lossless and extras. Again, a measure to help conserve bandwidth costs. There's a huge difference between 5,000 people downloading 300 Mb from an OCR mirror, and 5,000 people downloading a 2+ Gb package from an OCR mirror. I wasn't staff at the time FF4 was released so I don't know why it wasn't done so I can't really comment on that. It's basically impossible to prevent anyone from listening to the old version. It's been out there for four years and you can't go into people's computers to delete it. Even if it was replaced, it wouldn't magically make people only hear the new version. If anything, it would cause additional confusion because of the identical filenames or whatever and having people seek both versions even more. From the way you're saying things, it sounds like that's the exact opposite of what you want from this. Asking OCR to do you a favor for all of your contributions over the years is basically asking the staff to play favorites with their policies. I joined staff after being an ardent detractor to many of the things going on with the site, with one goal being to continue to represent the community at large to preserve equality, fairness, and efficiency. As someone who holds the ideal of "no one gets special treatment" higher than nearly everything else as I work on stuff for the site, you asking for a personal favor to be done to bend/break policy due to your personal contributions makes me very sad. It very much strikes me as being a step backwards as a musician, but that's just my perspective. I empathize with you, Jay. I really do. I liken my work on the track "The World is Dreaming" to your work on "Genesis of Destruction". To me, it doesn't sound nearly as good now in comparison to what I could potentially make it were I to know then what I know now. However, it would be a disservice to everyone involved to retcon that version and replace it with one that is, only from that one creator's perspective, superior. It kind of spits in the face of everyone who contributed to it that enjoyed or spent time on the original mix if your desire is to replace it. As I said before, it's perfectly awesome to supplement it and say "hey, look at how much better/different this sounds now! compare it to the old one and see the contrast". But replacing it is, at least in my eyes, the equivalent of "I want to erase this from history, thus erasing any pride or critique on it in the process. anyone who said it sounded good before is wrong." We may not talk as much as we used to, but as a good friend of yours, the only advice I can give is to promote and pimp your new versions to your hearts content, and then leave it be. I apologize if your requests were seemingly "ignored" before, but as you can see, Dave has already responded with his official position. However, the fact that you feel that the version that was released before was not treated as being "special" enough. Your wording here is a bit confusing, though. When you say it was "accepted despite my entire intention to have it be something so special and unique for the site", who exactly are you referring to for that acceptance? And are you saying that it was NOT special and unique before, and only now after the new and improved version that it is? And when you're referring to "no one in the leadership really acknowledge the hard work and care that went into it", are you talking about the old version or the new version? Its very confusing because it sounds like the only reason you made the new version and want it replaced was because people in the community here didn't trumpet the original version on the album as being something as great and spectacular as you perceived it to be (or at least perceived your original idea of what it should sound like to be). And to me, that sounds like a bit of a spiteful reason to be so defensive of the new version and so derogatory of the old one. And leadership meaning what? The album directors? OCR staff at time of release? OCR staff now?

amazing birthday to an amazing man

Jay, bro, my main, my main dawg. Glad you've been working on an updated version. I'm downloading it right now as we speak. But removing the track, even just from a fan perspective, is something I'm not really supportive of. I think calling what was released with the album "a disservice" is pretty brutal. True, it may not have lived up to the potential you saw it as having, but it was still a solid track and a product of the project so it fits in context. Besides the difficulty in going back to replace a torrent and having everyone start seeding anew (people who already got it will have no idea to get a new version unless they came back to check and saw their torrent hash didnt match the one given by the ocr tracker), and replacing youtube stuff which resets comments as well as play count, its also kind of cheating. People who release stuff on OCR do so knowing full well that they can't replace it or take it down afterward. It's part of the consent statement. The only replacements that have been done thus far have been on the site's behalf for getting lossless wavs of exact already existing versions of the songs to improve the posted quality when the mp3/filesize cap got up'd. Hell, even I personally have songs on here I would take down and replace with different mastering or just take down period because they sound kinda like crap to me now. In addition to being unfair and basically disrupting/undermining the whole judging and vetting process (post shit now, fix it later), it just doesn't ring of sound musical ethics. LuIzA completely redid her version of Fire Cross, and instead of asking for it to be replaced on the site for not meeting her now-current standards, she just posted it in the thread of the song's reviews and on facebook and whatnot. What you have here is a great supplement to what already exists on the album. Supplement, not supplant. The mix has come very far, but I just don't see the need to consider trying to replace it. If anything it does MORE injustice to it because you lose the context of what it sounded like when it was not up to your standards. I definitely appreciate your new mix more comparing it to what it was before.

Well lookey here! Looks like this album is gonna be coming out sometime soon!

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask the mods to shut this thread down. I don't ever remember getting a submission email for this album, so its in no way an official album and as such doesn't belong here in Community with the other official threads. That being said, I'm surprised this even happened in the first place. I mean, an album of a single song with an additional remix as a bonus? What a disturbing lack of content. In all my decades here at OCR, I've yet to see an album so blunt in its vacuousness. The material that is here isn't even that original. I've heard these cake songs before on other albums, so the ones here barely stand on their own two legs as being unique arrangements. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to go back to the drawing board. You obviously have a lot of motivation to make stuff happen, but you need to drastically rethink your approach. tl;dr I love you all. Thank you for always making me feel like this is a community where I belong, where people know and appreciate all I can bring, and where I'm happy just being myself. You're all amazong.

Years? Decades? Y'all know it's coming. We be working on it. Cherny, send me a PM, I need your email address.

Starting a new workout regime tomorrow with heavy emphasis on swimming at various intensities and lots of lean protein. Gotta get thin before I get BRICKED.

If there's anything in my experience on this site involving projects has taught me, it's that the whole "sooner or later" thing doesn't really apply to projects. Yes, the OCR quality bar has been stable for some time, but albums that span multitudes of years run the risk of having the older arrangements, which might have been passable back when they were completed, not aging well and slipping in the quality department in relation to more recent tracks. It's also just generally no fun having finished a track in 2010 or so and then having that song wait umpteen years to be released (I'm no stranger to this, although I can understand there as some situations where there's not much of a choice). A few months is fine, but once you get into the years department it becomes more of an issue. That being said, this is just me trying to give good advice and in no way commanding you to finish this ASAP. With the album so close to completion, why not just push for it and reach closure on this monstrosity of an album? (monstrosity used for sheer size and completeness) I've heard a lot of the tracks on this already, and there's a lot of great stuff here. I'm just anxious for it to finally be done. I am secretly just waiting for this to be submitted for eval so I can NO the everloving shit out of it lol JK

I hope you have a lot of crafting supplies and celebrity guests on tap for this. I'm going to make a thousand fake accounts to make you exhaust your supply of insults. Then I will cobble together a video from all that material and use it for an OCU arrangement of Snax and Jackson

I want to know what planet you live on because most of the people on Earth are pretty bitchy. But yeah, the album's been pretty well met with near universal praise.

We had a blast at CTCon this weekend! Thanks to everyone who showed up to any of the panels, or the performance, or just swung by the booth. It was great meeting and re-meeting so many awesome people. REALLY looking forward to hopefully coming back next year and doing it even better.

The same way concrete enemas aren't meant for everyone If anyone here does play through it and decides to stream or YT it, I'd probably watch it. Eventually. I like watching people put the game pain on themselves. It's about as close to gladiator games gore enjoyment as I can get right.

Basically this. It's a way to continue enjoying the core concept of something that you really love while still experiencing the thrill of the original challenge. FFT was not an easy game to understand at first for anyone who played it, unless people came into it knowing it came from the same folks who made Tactics Ogre. There are people who became so familiar with the game that further replays to try and experience all the permutations of the near-infinitely deep battle system got bored, due to their knowledge as well as some game breaking bugs. While I'm not one who enjoys this kind of punishment, it's not surprising that it exists. I'm more a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics Complete, and the WOTL script patch for the PS1 version. Combining those two patches together fixes a lot of what was wrong, both gameplay wise and script wise, with the PS1 version. Anyone who wants to get a fresh exposure to FFT without having their testicles demolished should look those two up instead.

After a few months of a much needed break from stuff... I'm back, bitches. I'm slowly getting back in the motions of organizing and managing the project stuff on the backend, but I will update this thread as soon as I can. There's some pressing deadlines on the side so I can't say when, but I will now try to look and update this once a week. Please post updates in here so I don't have to fish in your individual project threads for an update. Save me time and save yourself the hassle Elite Project Management Agents are

http://viewrz.com/video/level99-daytona-usa

Will work some magic. But for now this should hold you over for at LEAST three or four....minutes.

I thought there were way more than 40 rounds of Dwelling of Duels

Aight, for reals, everyone... Y'all know its coming. No matter when you shower, or shave, or go to school, or yell at your shoes, it'll still be coming. What time you hit up the toilet or go swimming with a dolphin won't affect anything that's going on on the backend. Sit tight. Or stand loose. Or bungie jump naked. FF6 will still be coming out when it comes out. Which is soon. Very soon. Enjoy the anticipation while you can. For a smart man once said that the anticipation for something is often more rewarding and exciting than the thing itself. Honestly, I think Captain Picard might have said it but whatevs.