Kanthos

Out of curiosity, is a frost mage viable in Northrend? I mean, are there many enemies with frost resistance?

Does the silver saw preset have a long delay on the envelope?

Not necessarily hard, depending on the engine you're doing, but to do much more than Pac-man or Pong requires a good sense of overall architectural and design principles. It's also very time-consuming to re-invent someone else's work.

Which campus is that at? The one on Simcoe in Oshawa? Just curious (I grew up in Ajax and live in Newmarket). There are free services out there. Try www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com. Programming isn't for you then. There are very few courses in a university CS program that will actually teach you programming. I took 2; my school offered a maximum of 4 (you started in one of three courses depending on how much programming experience you already had). In upper-year courses and when you're out in the industry, they're going to assume you know a lot or can figure it out on your own. Programming languages and libraries evolve rapidly enough that you're expected to keep up, at least with what you're working in. Not to mention that most places will have their own libraries of code that you'll need to figure out and use. Definitely DO NOT do this. If you want to be a programmer, it is in your best interest to be proficient in a small number of languages and prove that you can readily adapt to new ones than to show that you know enough in a wide variety of languages to be dangerous but not enough to be truly useful. If you want to be a game programmer, learn C++. Start with C, sure, but make sure you understand how memory allocation works in C++, how to properly design classes, use templates, use the C++ I/O streams, and so on. For a beginner, I'd recommend Java. Don't waste your time with Visual Basic; you'll pick up too many bad habits that will stick with you unless you're perceptive enough to realize, upon looking at a better language, what's wrong. Learn HTML and CSS if you want, but they're not programming languages and aren't worth putting on a resume if you're applying for a programming job. They're useful in creating a website, but if you want to be a web programmer (as opposed to a web designer), you'll want to learn one or more of PHP, Perl, and Ruby on Rails. In summary, focus on C++ or Java and don't bother with anything else, at least until you have a solid grasp of one of those. And put in a lot of time making some substantial programs (make a simple game like Pac-man, a windowed program with a full GUI with menus and dialogs, something that does useful stuff with files, that kind of thing). You'll learn a lot that you won't be able to pick up with little toy programs like finding your weight on Mars. Of course, those toy programs are useful when you're first starting to learn to code; don't sit down having never coded before and try to do something massive.

You're a DT fan, albeit one who apparently favours Kevin Moore over Jordan Rudess. Think about the keyboard parts in the songs of theirs that you like. What makes them work? It's not just the technical ability of the player as a pianist/keyboardist; it's the work that goes into sound design, figuring your way around constrained hardware (ex: Jordan switched from one Korg keyboard to the Korg Oasys as his touring instrument a few years back because it has more onboard memory so he could load more samples in it). Keyboard players also have to think about how to organize the sounds: are they layering different sounds? Do they have several keyboards or synth modules and one or two master controllers where they have to think about MIDI to get it working right? Similarly, any hack with fast fingers can plug a guitar into an amp; part of the skill of being a guitarist is coming up with the right set of effects and using them correctly to craft the sound you want. Sound design is very much musical and is also very much technical. As for software-based music tools, the same thing applies. Any hack can hit a bunch of buttons and call it a song. Virtual instruments and DAWs are no less instruments than guitars and keyboards, although for many they are ones that follow a different recording process and aren't easily performed live. Then again, it's not uncommon for artists to bring laptops with them on tour, if they want more versatility, and to play sounds live. Lyle Mays from the Pat Metheny Group is a great example. His stage setup on the last two PMG tours consisted of a few (maybe 3, not a lot) keyboards and synths, a MIDI grand piano, and a couple laptops. He controlled the software synths on the laptops from his other keyboards in realtime; I can think of only one song where they use any playback at all, and it's because the sounds are too electronic and too layered to have one person play them back live. Lyle had to do the sound design in software before the tour and then work with the software (via MIDI) while performing. The computer is becoming more and more of a "legitimate" instrument as technology improves.

Wasn't trying to make anyone sound dumb. I just saw things playing out a different way than you and wanted to prevent it from happening. Namely, that the OP followed the guide without thinking about whether or not it applied exactly to the piece he's working on, simply because someone gave him a guide. The goal of my post was to help him avoid doing so. If the OP has a decent enough musical background, he won't need such a guide (I suspect his problems came from the fact that he's used to playing an instrument but not arranging on a computer); he'll be able to figure things out for himself once he knows which parameter to change. If the OP isn't as strong a musician, hopefully my post would cause him to say, "Well, I'm doing a song in genre X, here's a WIP; what pattern of accents would you suggest I use?" I was trying to prompt the OP to ask the right question and get the right answer, rather than come up with a general and probably useless answer (I could talk about accents competently in jazz but not in anything electronic, for example). @ the OP: If you're still stuck on what to do, why not tell us what you're trying to accomplish and what genre your piece is in, and preferably post a WIP, so someone can help you more directly?

Ignore this guide. It's only useful if you're a) Playing in 4/4 time, only playing quarter notes, c) not playing the emphasis the "standard" classical way (which is STRONG weak Medium weak, not STRONG Medium STRONG Medium) and d) want to make something incredibly boring. Humanizing a piece is done somewhat well by humanizing algorithms in DAWs, and what they do is surely more complicated than this guide. The poster means well, but if you follow it, you'll probably end up with something worse than what you had originally. The emphasis of your beats is dependent on the style you're writing in, the direction of the melody, the rhythmic groove of the piece, and even the particular instrument that's playing (try accenting every instrument in a piece the same way; you'll find that some sound natural and some do not). The way you emphasize can also change as the piece progresses. Basically, do what's best for a given phrase or section. Your ears are your best friend here.

DAW = Digital Audio Workstation, a package that lets you record and arrange your own music. If you got crackling there, it'd probably be your fault (or that your computer wasn't powerful enough), but you're only listening to other audio, not making your own, so that's different.

You're talking about crackling on audio files, not crackling when trying to play back audio in your DAW, right? Are you sure there's no problem with the audio files themselves?

You mean the remake that has been announced for the DS? What else would it be coming out for? Um, last time I checked, you could save. Not only that, the game prompted you to save when you enter each new era. Failing that, why not close the lid on your DS to conserve power (although that obviously doesn't work if you want to play something else mid-game).

Unless you're trying to play all your music at the same time in multiple players, the number of songs you have is irrelevant to RAM usage. Or do you mean hard drive space?

Seriously. You seem to be asking a large number of questions that are easily answered by looking up the answer yourself. You'll find that in nearly *any* online community of knowledgeable people, those who know the answers tend to be helpful to those who have tried to find the answer and failed, not those who can't be bothered to look. If you try to set up your MIDI controller and run into difficulties, people will be willing to help, but if you can't be bothered to read the manual, people can't be bothered to type out what the manual says.

Stupid10charlimit

There's a lot of good mixes here. Download the torrents and decide for yourself what you like. You'll probably also hear some other mixes that aren't what you describe that you might like.

In nearly any field which requires any skill, be it music, programming, or something else, there's a noticeable difference between those who have a gift and have chosen to use it and those who just work hard. Putting time into something can only get you so far. Learning and practicing how to compose, for example, is not going to make you a genius composer. Having the right ingrained skills along with hard work will. Short of genetic modifications, an individual human isn't capable of everything to a high degree. Can everyone do everything at some basic level with enough practice? Short of genetic and physical defects, probably. I doubt there are many people, if any, who couldn't get a remix posted here. The difference is whether those people spend years learning things and need a ton of major revisions and resubmissions to get things right or whether they pick it up relatively quickly and their music is actually inspired.

Troll, the referenced artist on Newgrounds, idiot. Take your pick. The concern is that the artist may have taken OCRemix songs and post them under his own name, claiming that he wrote them. I can't see people complaining in general, (and definitely not in this thread so far) about someone taking OCRemix songs and reinterpreting them or even adding new stuff to the existing audio. If there's any paranoia, it's more on the part of the Newgrounds mod who brought the artist to OCRemix attention without being able to say "Here, this particular track of his is an OCRemix by someone else". Liontamer is looking into possible plagiarism (and rightly so), but won't do anything if he didn't steal any OCRemixes.

Yeah, if you tell us what your skills are and what kind of computer you have (speed, memory, dual core or not, and OS), people can give reasonable recommendations.

The answer is here.

I love the new Facebook because I no longer have to see the 5 miles of screenspace of applications that some people have on their wall. I just never go to the applications tab and I'm happy.

Happy birthday you two!

Honestly, having or not having a degree varies by the person. I'm not quite in a position to hire right now (today's my last day as a team lead on my team; I start a new job with a new company on Tuesday), but I've had discussions about hiring with others in my company who have hired before. Personally, if I was hiring a developer, I wouldn't write them off immediately if they had no degree, depending on the position (I'd never hire someone with only a few years experience and no degree for a senior position). However, I'd expect them to know what someone with a degree knew, at least as is relevant to the job, and their interview would be harder (if I'm familiar with the school from which they have their degree, and in Canada, I'm at least familiar with all the schools that are well-known for CS, then I'd still want to see that they actually learned what they should, but would lean towards a random sampling of knowledge as opposed to an exhaustive test). If they don't know data structures, don't know at least a little bit about optimizing code, don't have significant experience (on their own is fine) with any production programming language (I don't care if we're a java shop and they only have done C++), then no hire. If they have a game development degree and know about AI and graphics but write sloppy code without any thought to architecture and maintainability and don't understand all but the most basic data structures, no hire.

Your university doesn't have a locally-accessible webpage that will tell you what you've downloaded?

Conversion won't help you in any way. Some files you buy from iTunes still have DRM and can only be played back in iTunes or on an iPod. Short of recording from your line out as you play the track or finding a program that hacks or removes the Apple DRM, there's no way to get around that. I'm not sure offhand whether all tracks added after a certain date are DRM-free or whether the artist/label gets the choice of whether to use DRM or not on the iTunes store, but basically, your choice is buy the songs again in a DRM-free format or stick to iTunes.

Do it point-and-click style. Creating MIDI files just adds an extra step to making a remix that isn't particularly useful - your MIDI file probably won't have the right articulations and such. Your best bet is to use FL Studio or something similar that *can* actually be used for mixing and input the notes into that program with your keyboard and mouse.

I definitely won't have time to vote in the semis and probably not in the finals either, but good luck to you all!