Shadix

As you may have known SAGE has been going on for the past week at http://www.sagexpo.org/ (I'm running it). Besides possibly the best game (demo) lineup we've had, there have been so many events and special guests I have to make a list: -Eric Iwasaki (A veteran developer from Naughty Dog. Worked on shaders and stuff.) -Chris Senn (You guys should know who this is) -Richard Wheeler (Worked on Sonic Xtreme) -Lee Brotherton (Dreams of an Absolution, EGGMAN Remix, Sonic Rivals soundtrack, etc) -Richard Jacques (We did an audio interview of this guy, composed Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic R, Mass Effect, Head Hunter, SEGA Superstars Tennis, some songs for Jet Set Radio, a mix of Dreams Dreams on the new NiGHTs game, and most recently music for Sonic Chronicles.) -Mike Pollock (We held a trivia gameshow over the SAGEcasts with him acting out in character while the winners of our trivia challenged him, it was freaking fun.) -Ryan Drummond You can get transcripts and times via the SAGE site. Saxman finally released ProSonic, Stealth released a new build of E02. Tons of fangames to check out as well. Basically, Howard Drossin will be appearing in the channel Friday night at 12EDT. This will be an excellent opportunity for you guys to get off all those deep dark questions about possible Michael Jackson involvement in Sonic 3, or his possible work on a soundtrack for Sonic Xtreme. Jun Senoue is also theoretically stopping by Friday to say hi. You can get there by our IRC channel: irc.rizon.net #sagexpo

Well then again look at E3. It's an expo to show off their games and get publicity. The only sad part is that usually the games end up not getting finished at all, due to the nature of fangaming.

Just to let you guys know the show is underway!

haha, thanks. Just to fill you guys in the show starts in several hours. In addition to our huge roster of guests, Mike Pollock, Eric Iwasaki of Naughty Dog and Lee Brotherton of (here?) have joined for the show. In addition. We will have a Karaoke Tournament Tuesday for a special call-in during the Richard Jacques interview. We will have a Sonic Robo Blast 2 tournament with $20 dollars prize and a SAGE 08 T-Shirt. We will have a Special gameshow trivia with Mike Pollock Thursday, where the top players in our ranked trivia bot statistics will get to compete for the chance to go one on one with Eggman himself!

I wholeheartedly disagree. The Genesis version of Volcano Valley is way better than the Saturn. ...Same with Diamond Dust. Saturn Diamond Dust is just a generic snowy song.

Huge Update: Richard Jacques Confirmed for SAGE! Christian Senn Confirmed for SAGE! Concerts Confirmed for SAGE! DOM's Live Videogame Show Performing for SAGE!

You forgot the other Sophie clone, Lizardman! I have to admit though you're arguement doesn't really work. Sophitia appears in every Soul Calibur game. Even SC2 has both Cassandra and Sophie. (and Lizardman) Both Sigfried and Nightmare are in SC1 and 3. Both Astaroth and Rock are in all the games, they also play quite differently. (In SC2 Rock isn't in there but the berserker has his moveset) Heck you could compare Talim and Cervantes too, even though their movesets differ drastically, their play-style is near the same. and you can't really compare Kilik and Seung Mina. Kilik uses a bo staff, while Seung mina uses a more halberd like polearm. -- Getting to the point, SCIV's cast seems pretty balanced even though they are bringing back some of the clones from SC3. I'm still a little upset that Li Long keeps getting the shaft for his clone Maxi. Seeing as this is supposedly the last game in the series it's a little disappointing that there hasn't been a complete and official reunion of the original Soul Blade cast. What you should be complaining about is the shameless twinked out Star Wars plugs. I think we are all going to die from Star Wars overexposure before too long.

Really cool guys, wasn't really expecting everyone to be this excited about it. Remember to email me or IM me at shadixep if you wish to have a SAGEcast timeslot during the event or want to hold some kind of workshop. Also, another question for you locales. Do you guys know how to draw attention to a music competition here? I suppose I need some help getting people interested in participating. (I've never ran a comp competition before). :E

No, it's completely online. I'm sorry if it might seem like a drag for those of you who are used to going to real expos like MAGfest. At least you don't have to pay anything to participate.

Shadix & MarkEchidna Presents Hey guys, I'm the promotionals director and corunner of SAGE 2008, along with my buddy MarkEchidna, and I wanted to share some of our plans for this year, as well as inform you guys of different ways you can participate. Table of Contents (As this post is likely to get pretty long-winded) --- Section 1: General Expo Information 1.1 - What is SAGE 1.2 - When is it? 1.3 - Registration Section 2: The Event 2.1 - The Games 2.2 - Special Guest Appearance from Ryan Drummond Section 3: What YOU Can Do 3.1 - SAGEcasts 3.2 - Workshops 3.3 - Extras 3.4 - Competitions General SAGE Information 1.1 - What is SAGE? The Sonic Amateur Game Expo, or SAGE, is an online gaming expo held annually at http://www.sagexpo.org/ to showcase the latest in the fangaming community. Traditionally its main purpose has been to showcase fangames based on the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise, however it is open to any freelance developer that wishes to participate. 2008 marks the event’s 13th itineration. In the past we’ve had many great games introduced, special guests, fun events, and this year will hopefully be the best yet. It’s a huge opportunity for fangamers to show off their latest product. We usually draw in about 5000 unique hits per day, going off 2004’s statistics, and the participation continues to grow. 1.2 - When Is It? August 17th - 24th 1.3 - Registration When August 4th comes around, we'll be opening up our registration. It will be an automated form that will help you get your game registe quickly and efficiently. Our game registration this year requires some sort of semblance of the game you will be showing at the event on your booth. It's going to be a direct link to your game, and we will be shifting through these to see what booths work. The Event 2.1 - THE GAMES Featured Titles: 2.2 - Special Guests! 2.3 The Entertainment We have more jam packed shows for you than you can shake a fist at! Evening SAGEcast Entertainment Concerts: What YOU Can Do 3.1 - SAGEcasts SAGEcasts are returning, and we need some timeslots cove! You can register for as many as you want, all you need to do is send me an email to coordinator@sagexpo.org with "SAGEcast" as the subject and I will handle your time requests as needed. Some of the events being held: -Karaoke & Competition -DJ Mixing Shows -Possible Concert Performance from Taxman's Band, "The Polites" Some ideas for what you guys can do in this area: Concerts\Performances: If you have a band or you make teh awesome musics, contact me about possibly performing on the radio during the event. Multicasts: We have this worked out so it works, if you guys want to, especially the folks here that run the podcast, want to have a live show with multiple hosts. I would just suggest in this instance that you guys get together more-or-less a flow for your show. Skits: In the honor of Slingerlands SAGE finale show last year, writing a scripted show is also a really cool way to get some attention, possibly with voice acting and the likes. 3.2 - SAGE Workshops We've actually been lacking these lately, the workshops give individuals opportunities to actually teach their fellow peers something they don't know, or expand on something they do know. Some example Workshop subjects: -Rom Hacking -Level Design Theory -Background Designing -Spriting -Modelling -Programming 3.3 - SAGE Extras I am also looking for extras for an extra section to the site which will be explained in greater detail if you chose to participate. Any extra stuff that doesn't fit into a casual catagory, like comics, videos, sekret software releases, contact me. 3.4 - Competitions The Complete Game Contest: Complete your game by August 8th and get spotlighted on the site. The Remix Competition: Remix a Tune from Sonic CD, results will be published on the Music Section of the site as well the remixes themselves. Tangible Prizes are still under consideration. Remix Competition Rules: -Composition must be at least 2:00 in length. Judging: Compositions will be judged on the following criteria -Arrangement -Production - This ones pretty self-explanatory, pay attention to your mixing\eqing and use of effects and panning. -Relevance - While originality is good, it can easily go overboard and you lose what made your source song your source song. Overly-liberal mixes send a bad signal to someone trying to fulfill their craving for nostalgia. -Originality - Midi Rips are bad. There are ways to keep the original song intact without having your song be the original song.

This one's a little early, but I figure I'll show off a little of what I'm working with here. Version 0.01: http://camp.misterworm.net/shadixstash/beatempest.mp3 I was just playing with some samples I had, got a beat going, sounding oddly Timbaland-y, wasn't really sure what to do with it as OC ideas weren't coming to mind. I was listening to Tidal Tempest Past and thought, "hmm... this is perfect". As a testament to my lovely need to fulfill my urge of exporting unfinished music, the last 16 bars shouldn't even be in this export . Although, at the same time another idea came to mind for the same track, and I'm not sure which idea is going to stick. The latter was meant to be more of a feel good hip hop mix along the lines of "Hey Ya" by Outkast. I was planning on having vocals and everything, however, my main problem seems to be that the source track is very much in minor. http://camp.misterworm.net/shadixstash/clipforotherversion.mp3 Just a little 4 bar beat for this version.

I'm not bashing the track, I'm just worried it's not going to fare well on the judges panel due to the fact that it's not really that distinct from the original, and given that the original track is already well produced and whatnot, it's alot more difficult to pull a mix like this off. You've made one admiral effort, I love the track save for the solo in the intro, however at times the track bleeds too much into the original, and given that the soundscape is more or less unchanged, when you go into source material segments it sounds like you are listening to the original song with minor changes. I would suggest maybe changing up the instrumentation of the piece, as the arrangement is there, it's just that the instrumentation follows too close to the original. I hope this track makes it to the site, as I love X6's soundtrack. You just picked a beast of a track to work with XD.

I love that you are trying to mix this, but really, it comes off sounding like cheap knockoff of the real one at times. :E It sounds really good in parts, it just overall doesn't stand up to the original track and doesn't sound distinct enough to seperate it from the original track. What you have going is really nice, but some of the ideas like messing with the little fanfare in the beginning come off sounding a little amateurish.

There were quite a few before Golden Sun as well. Valkerie Profile... Xenogears... :\ I don't know though, like, the cinematic aspect of MGS4 was what I loved most about it. I kindof like the whole "interactive story" style of gameplay.

That's what I get for not confirming a rumor myself. :E

Like how the bassline bursts into Launch Base at 1:40? I'm very impressed you got that you got that to blend so seamlessly. Edit: Holy smokes, does that mean Knuckles Sonic 3 theme used the Launch Base beat the whole time?

$535 seems like a pretty hefty price for a samplekit, even if it not only contain 32gb of samples but pretty much that whole variety of sounds you can spend oodles of money just hunting for. My question is, has anyone used this? I suppose you could say I'm afraid that what I am going to be getting is equivalent to a really good soundfont bank, where some instrument groups have good samples while others lack drastically. Then the question of industry viability comes in. Are the instrument sets good enough?

What, allow their synth settings\samples to be used commercially or let them exist outside of their keyboards? Anywho, I was trying to find a blanket term to describe both synth presets and samples. Actually coincidentally I did find a minimoog emulator the other day on a free synth site. I'm sure minimonsta is better though.

Zirc understood me. heh Pezman: You think it would be, but I simply can't get used to the clunky interface of Sibelius\Finale. I normally just use FL's piano roll for everything, however even that has limitations. (If only you could manipulate multiple channels at once. Arrangement can get tricky.) Our staff system was designed to be handwritten, and no program I know of has really done staffing justice. I'll have to try the workstation thing again with the keyboard. I've done it before, and actually threw together a pretty rad song much faster than I usually do in FL.

Oh come on you guys are overthinking this. All I want is to draw the notes on the staff and have the program convert it to recognizable midi. If you want an example, look at your manuscript book and imagine if you could not only hear as you are writing, but drew the rhythms with the pen instead having to use the crappy inefficient note type cycling staff programs have. Considering I'm having difficulty getting the concept across, I doubt a program with functionality like this even exists.

I'm aware of that... I'm looking for some sort of proprietary tool that will allow me to write sheet music "by hand" directly into midi, like a staff notebook program with note recognition. Do you have any idea how fast staff composition would be with something like that?

I apologize for posting 2 topics back to back, but this has been bugging me lately. I've been yearning to acquire the sampleset that Phantasy Star Online uses, for instance the chimes, hits, electronic noise, and some of the signature synths. I would've led it up to circumstance, but over time I've come to find that many of these professional composers\arrangers don't actually craft their own synths, and that there are synth packages floating around, whether it be internal workstation samplesets or otherwise. If you need some sound bites go look up Underworld [Chaos], Entry into the Crater Pt1 or Pt2, Tricktrack Pt. 2, the title theme, or even Image of a Hero. Another one that has alot of sounds I would like to get my hands on is whatever is used in Metroid Prime, although I suspect some of those sounds are hand-crafted.

I picked up an Intuos 3 the other day, and besides art, I was wondering if there were any tablet-input midi composition tools anywhere. I heard you can import TIF files into Finale and it will decipher the score, but is there anything that actually has some semblance of tablet integration already?

hold it! Isn't this just going to fuel his ego even more? XD "See? I'm so great they made a remix album about me telling u all about how amazing I am"

Sorry, but I'm certain you can find midis of the tracks on vgmusic.com.